Nov. 5, 2012
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Coach Alford Quotes:
Opening Statement….
“All in all. I was pretty pleased. We didn’t make the foul shot in the second half so when you have
that many fouls and you’re not making foul shots, it makes for a really sloppy half. So that’s where the
sloppiness came in. I thought we took care of the ball pretty well, but it was a wild game. It gives us a
little bit of tape to watch, but we’ll turn our attention immediately to Davidson.”
On Alex Kirk’s performance…
“We got really good production out of him and Cam. Cam didn’t finish in this game like he did in the
last game, but to get 14 [points] and seven [rebounds] and 16 [points] and eight [rebounds] out of that
center spot… Obviously we have got to continue to go in there, and I thought those guys did well. It
was great for Alex to get to moving around again. He hadn’t played a game in nearly 600 days. That’s
not easy. That why I wish we had him for both exhibition games, but I was really pleased with what we
saw out of him today. He and Cam were making free throws, they’re rebounding the basketball, they’re
running the floor and that’s what we need them to do.”
On the guard play…
“Well that’s what we got to have. I think we’ve talked about that we have to group rebound. We have to
chase down loose balls. And I thought our guards did a pretty good job of that. It wasn’t a night where
they particularly made a lot of shots. We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well. But we got out and
ran in transition and I think we really hurt them on the backboard when we needed to, and that was a
positive.”
On who will start at center vs. Davidson…
“Well, we’ll see. We’ll watch more tape and everything. We don’t pay much attention to that. It’s not
like Cam was here last year playing and that Alex was out hurt. Cam’s done an awful lot to earn the
starting part and so has Alex. Alex has done a lot of good things to earn the starting spot. What were
the minutes? Cam, 19 and Alex, 21. I think to begin the year, you’re going to see a lot of that. And
then we’ll see how the year progresses. And I’ve talked to Alex about that. I don’t want to put any more
stress on him. It’s very difficult to sit out a year. And to come right back in and play the schedule we
have to play, I don’t want to lose him three, four, five games into this thing. We’ve go to build it slowly
and today was a good first step for him.”
On his biggest concern heading into Davidson…
“Davidson. They are extremely good. We’ve seen them on tape enough. Extremely talented. They’re
about eight deep but they run the floor about as well as anyone we’ll play all year long. They shoot the
ball from every position from three. They guard you. This is a very experienced team. All five starters
are back from a team that won a championship last year and made the Tournament. So my biggest
concern right now is Davidson and we’ve got to get our guys prepared here in the next six days.”
On playing again…
“It felt really good. Definitely the first few minutes I was really nervous. I had flashbacks of that Detroit game my freshman year of me running up and down the court not knowing where I was going. Once I got the flow, I felt really good and felt my condition come in with me and got a little bit of a second wind in me and it felt really good.”
On sitting on sideline…
“It was frustrating. The ultimate goal is Davidson. With the coaches and players around me, I knew that was our main goal. If I had to miss one game, this would be the time to miss. We continued to work. Our trainer and I probably put in 35 treatments since I had the injured ankle so I have to thank him waking up and meeting me in between classes to work on the ankle and massage it and ice bucket. It was not really frustrating. It was just something I had to deal with. I dealt with it and moved on.”
On the effort from guards…
“That is an emphasis. To have two bigs in, that has been an emphasis for us since day one. We need to rebound and I think everyone is buying in. I think that Davidson is going to be a huge challenge. If we keep working hard and rebounding, I think we can win the game.”
On play in second half…
“We lost our concentration. The things at the foul line and there was some turnovers. We couldn’t run. We were capitalizing that in the first half and getting stops. That’s what we do best. They were scoring and it was stopping our transition. That was the main issue. We couldn’t go out and run like we normally do in the first half. We put together a great first half. We just have to do that for 40 minutes.”