Miami Quotes
Head coach Dr. John Giannini
Opening Statement:
“This is going to be surprising, but up until the very end when our guys got tired, our kids really tried hard and gave great effort. This loss has nothing to do with our players; this loss has to do with me not evaluating this team properly with how I put it together. This is not a team with injuries, this isn’t a team that had to be rebuilding, this is a team that I thought was better than it is. That is a billion percent my fault. I choose everything you see out there. I can live with these kids because they are great kids and are going to play hard. I am going to have a real hard time living with myself the next three months. Injuries didn’t do this, rebuilding didn’t do this. I did this. I know when people’s teams don’t do well they like to be angry at the cause. Everyone has every right to be angry with me for putting this team together the way I did.”
“Now, we have 20 opportunities to get better and I believe we will. We just got beaten badly by two outstanding teams. Utah just beat Duke, and these guys (Miami) beat Utah pretty much the way they beat us today. We will get better. My kids will not quit. There is a saying, it’s a Dick Bennett saying, and he said recruit kids that you can’t only win with but recruit kids you can lose with. Everyone loses; when you lose make sure you have kids who won’t quit. My kids won’t quit. We will get better. The fact that we are where we are right now isn’t their fault, it’s my fault. This is no false humility or trying to beat the blame before it comes to me. My assistants put us in position to recruit other players who in hindsight could have helped this team and I said we are okay. I was obviously very wrong and it’s my fault.”
“We are going to keep fighting and we are going to try and get better. Long term I do still have a plan that I think is going to make us into a good team in the next 12 months."
On where Miami had the advantage:
“They are infinitely ahead of us right now and it’s not even close. There is no similarity between the two teams at all.”
On what he wishes he could have done differently:
“I wish I would have gotten these kids more help. They are doing all they can but they don’t have enough help. They are doing everything they can. You saw missed threes, missed layups, guys who couldn’t rebound. They don’t have enough help. We don’t game plan to have five of our seven guys without a rebound at halftime. You can’t game plan that. The shots that we are missing and the shots that they are missing, until it got out of hand late, were not actually that different in terms of quality of shots. They were just able to make them. I am not saying I don’t have good players, I’m saying I didn’t give this team help, depth and overall talent that it needs. That is even worse than not coaching them well. Not coaching them well, you can game plan and tweak and do a better job as a coach. When you don’t put a team together properly there is no quick fix for that.”
