Men's Basketball Quotes vs. Richmond
Coach Giannini
Opening Statement:
“I thought coming into this game that Richmond was playing the best of anyone in the A-10. Their win at VCU was terrific, their players are terrific, and the way they play basketball is terrific. They’ve lost in overtime at GW, they’ve lost on two 40 foot shots at home where they had a two point lead and people made hit 40 foot shots to beat them by one. This is a team that could very easily be an NCAA Tournament level team and at the top of our league. I think they’re terrific and one of the best teams in our league. I feel absolutely great, I love our toughness, they made a run which we thought they would and our guys hung in there. They challenged us and our guys responded. We had individuals make some bad plays and then make some great plays down the stretch to win the game. I like my team’s mentality, I certainly love the outcome.”
On the offensive strategy:
“You can’t run on them, your plays won’t work on them because they switch everything, you can’t score easily inside the arc because their help is so good, the only two things you can really do against them is get certain matchups. If you have a smaller guy, try to get the ball to the paint. One thing we didn’t do tonight, Jordan did it at the end of the first half, if you get a bigger guy on you then you have to shoot. One of the mistakes we made against them last year was we kept trying to drive their big guys and we did that a little today. Their big guys are big, they’re long, they help, and we couldn’t finish against them. It’s so hard to play against them. Of course you have to back in the small guards legally, we had one charge, but after that we pivoted and changed directions and our guys did a great job of that.”
On the team’s three game winning streak:
“There is no such thing as hot or cold in this league. Every game you play is 50-50. If we lost you can’t feel bad because there is no time to feel bad. If you win, we can feel good for tonight but when we wake up tomorrow we can’t feel good because UMass is good enough as they have already done it. The only time you can feel good or bad is at the end of the season. There is no feeling hot, there is no psychology, and you just have to get ready for the next game. I know it is a coaching cliché but if you had to play against UMass you wouldn’t be thinking about the future or the past, you would be thinking about UMass.”
On the team’s defense:
“I just think that number one we have good kids and they understand that the most important thing in having a good team is effort. Effort is having a good defense. Offense isn’t effort, offense is decisions and skill and spacing. Defense is effort. We always want to be hard workers and our guys are. Defense has helped us win games.”
Senior Center Steve Zack
On the team’s first half effort:
“We played to the ability that we know we can play to. Shots are going to fall sometimes and sometimes they aren’t. What really matters is the defense and we were getting stops in the first half. We held them to 26 points in the first hand so that is always our key. I think we played really well in the first half.”
On the team’s three game winning streak:
“It is very important to get hot at the right time of the year. We are taking it game by game, we aren’t focused on going on a ten game winning streak, we are just looking to beat UMass.”
Sophomore Guard Jordan Price
On the team’s first half effort:
“I think we played well. Like Steve said our main focus is on our defense. If our defense is going than our offense is going to flow.”
On Richmond’s Run:
“I didn’t think too much of it. Basketball is a game of runs. They had their runs and we had our runs. We finished with our runs so we got the W.”
On how the team is playing:
“I feel like we are coming together as a team like now. We are on a three game winning streak and I feel like we are playing our best basketball right now. This is a good time to be doing that.”
