Feb. 29, 2012
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Head Coach Steve Alford
Opening Statement…
“I am extremely proud of our basketball team. We have spent the last 72 hours trying to tell them that what we did on the road was very special this year, to be able to go 7-3 and 4-3 in our league. We didn’t want them discouraged. We didn’t play a lot of good basketball on the road last week and we knew that was going to be a difficult road trip to begin with. We wanted them to really understand that we appreciate the four road wins as coaches. We wanted to get back home and get back to playing at the level that we had been playing at. I thought that tonight we did an awful lot of good things; we shared the basketball, we didn’t turn the ball over, we dominated the glass and I thought our defense was back to being that stingy defense that we had been seeing. I’m extremely pleased and our guys know that the job is not done yet. We are one game away and 40 minutes away from getting another championship. The locker room is very excited about Saturday.”
On the UCLA Sports Illustrated story…
“I have no idea and I haven’t even seen the story. All that I know is that we have had him for two and a half, three years now. He has been a double-double guy for us. He has been an incredible player and person for us. He has been a great teammate. Tonight he was 7-8 at half time and he gets one shot in the second half and he is laughing and joking on the bench and praising his teammates. He has been unselfish since he has been here. He took 23 hours in the fall, I have never had a player in 21 years take that many hours in the fall and it was his best GPA. I told him he should take 23 hours every semester. He has done everything that we have asked him to do. All I can comment on is what has happened here. I have no idea what took place there in 2008. He is driven to win a championship with this team and obviously you can ask him whatever questions you want. We never hide from that. You won’t get a comment about it until after the season from him about 2008.”
On the extra fire in Drew Gordon tonight…
“I thought he played better tonight. It wasn’t so much the fire on the road. I think we had so much emotion and a lot of people made a lot to with San Diego State and UNLV. Basically, all of our team heard for a month is `we’ve got to get to San Diego State and we have got to get to UNLV and we will see how good we are in the rematch.’ There was a lot of emotion in that week but I don’t think you understand what goes into winning seven games in a row and a lot of those games were away from home in this league. No one else has won seven games in a row in this league this year. I think that drained us and to have a quick turnaround playing on Tuesday I thought we looked mentally fatigued. We tried as much as we could as coaches to help with that. I saw on Saturday that we were tied at the half and then we just let it get away and we didn’t have any fight to us at the end. We addressed those things but I thought tonight all of us, including Drew, played like we were playing before we went on the road trip.”
On Hugh Greenwood…
“He finally shot the ball. We have been begging him for a month to shot the basketball and he can really shoot it. He gives us another guy that can shoot and score. Hugh is just so unselfish. He is one of those guys that the first stat he looks at is assists-to-turnovers [ratio]. That is what you want from a player and that is what our program has always been about is unselfish play. He is almost too unselfish. I think to begin the half he had three wide open shots and finally the bench started screaming at him and he finally took the fourth time he was open and then he got hot. He can really shoot it and that can give us another scorer when we get close to post season play. He is very capable of doing that and I thought he had a special night. He is really rebounding the ball well.”
On the fast start to the game and Drew Gordon getting off to a good start…
“I think Drew was going to be a big key for us because we had worked for two days on getting the ball inside. I think we are bigger inside and we have an inside presence. Air Force doesn’t have a shot-blocking presence in our opinion so we wanted to go inside. I thought we did a good job in doing that. This game mirrored game one in that we were able to establish inside, establish ourselves defensively and we got our transition game going. I thought we did that in both games and that was going to be a key in this game because they had been playing better.”
On Michael Lyons…
“I think he has six points in our first game and nine points tonight and we have done a really good job on their best scorer. We wanted to make somebody else have to score tonight and I thought we did a really good job on him. We made shots difficult for them and we took away any kind of transition that they had but we were able to get out and get our transition game going. Our transition game got going especially in the second half. It was two really good halves for us and I thought we played really good basketball.”
On Kendall Williams and Tony Snell…
“I hope this shows the maturing of a basketball team and maturing of young individuals. Kendall and Tony are scorers and Kendall gets three shots and Tony gets five shots and yet they do a really good job of trying to get the ball to Hugh to start the second half. When the ball is moving for us we are a different defensive team then when we just hold it and pound it or stand. I thought we had better ball and people movement tonight. Tony and Kendall did a very good job of moving the ball for us.”
On the bench play…
“It has been a strength of ours all year long. Our bench play is terrific and we have got to continue to use that bench. I think the bench knows that I trust them and they trust how they are playing with their minutes and their roles. I thought Phillip McDonald came in and made some shots. Jamal Fenton got going again and Cam Bairstow is doing a great job of not just rebounding but having a presence with screening. He is the best screener that we have. This is a game where I don’t think we played anyone for more than 27 minutes. It helps us going into a Saturday game that tips and 2 p.m. and we should be rested and have a lot of energy going into that game.”
On Boise State…
“They have played very well and have gotten some key guys that are playing that have been hurt so they are a little more dangerous than when we played them the first game. They are shooting the ball very well and they spread you out. They play four guards a lot of times and it is going to be a challenge to our defense. We have got to do a good job in the next 72 hours of setting our guys up defensively. This is a team that can really score and mixes defenses a little bit, mostly man but we will play some three-two zone. This will be an exciting game. We are going down to the last game of the regular season and we are 40 minutes away. We are 40 minutes for winning our third title in four years. Regardless of who it is coming in here we are excited to play that game.”
On mindset before game
“It was a rough road week. We lost to TCU and they were a good team. They have not lost at home. We knew it was going to be a fight going in against TCU and we came out on the losing side. We had to take a look at what was going wrong and what was going right. We practiced on those things and won this game.”
On last game in The Pit in Saturday
“Fortunately, we are playing for a ring. This is big. It is a great thing for the freshman and also the sophomores who did not get one last year. It is definitely bitter-sweet. This place has treated me with the utmost respect and I had good times and bad times in here. It is going to be rough saying goodbye but I am happy to look forward to the future.”
On shooting in the second half
“It was a lot of fun. Drew Gordon came out in the first half and did the same thing. It is a lot of fun. The teammates get excited. That is the best part of the game to look over at the bench and see them up and about. That is the fun part about the game.”
On crowd asking him to shoot
“It was funny. I took a step over half-court and they are telling me to shoot it. I did have one shot there and I fell short. The teammates kept giving me the ball. Kendall Williams kept calling plays for me. That is the leadership aspect. That is what he brings to this group. If he tells me to shoot, I will shoot.”