VCU Quotes
Opening statement:
"We lost to a truly fantastic team that is headed to the NCAA Tournament and is undefeated in the Atlantic 10 and they showed us why today. They are deep, they shoot it great. We are obviously struggling. Something I haven't talked about is Jordan Price playing with a broken finger, that makes it really tough. We have five guys with any bit of experience in our program out there. Jordan is a guy we rely on and he is doing his best, but playing with a broken finger isn't easy. I think it was a combination of our turnovers and them shooting the ball tremendously, that is a bad combination."
On how VCU defended Jordan Price:
"They did a good job. They put Billbury on him and the kid was tough and physical. Like I said its tough, Jordan is probably playing with one hand."
On the experience the team is gaining:
"The experiences these guys are getting are really going to help us in the future. Tony is getting better all the time. Johnnie had a tough time turning it over; he got a little bit tired. When Amar was in foul trouble he had to do all the ball handling. But he will learn from his mistakes. You don't learn unless you make mistakes. Cleon has really learned to play hard all of the time. He has got some big steals and some big loose balls. Someone who has never played before thinks of course you always play hard. That means that you don't let up for one second, every time the ball moves you move. Every time your man moves your move and you never stop fighting for. You try to do that against that level of competition for 40 minutes and never give up its hard. Cleon has really learned the skill of playing hard for 40 minutes at a time. These guys are getting experiences that are really going to help us when we get back to a full roster."
On Melvin Johnson:
"If you are playing man and have some guys who are up to guarding him you have a shot. With us playing zone a lot he could get open. When you are playing zone you don't always expect someone to shoot from 30 feet. He is terrific against the zone, which is what happened most of the game against us. When we went man we were able to calm him down a little bit, but he is still very good. Against our zone he was able to shoot it from deep and from places you don't expect guys to shoot it from."
On what Will Wade has done this season:
"It's wonderful. Their success speaks for itself, but you watch them on tape and on top of it he is just a really nice person, a very humble guy. I am very happy for him. I was a good friend of Shaka's and I look forward to having a good friendship with Will. This program is used to winning. We have won two of the past three against VCU. We have won our last two at their place. We just came back from Dayton and before that we had beaten them twice in a row. I think we have either beaten or split with St. Joes the last four years. We are used to beating good teams and we will get back to that."
