UNC-Michigan Quotes

North Carolina Head Coach Roy Williams
Opening Statement
"We shot the ball really well early today. We got a little bit of margin error when they missed two or three shots and we still made those. Shoot 64 percent in the first half and out-rebound them by 11, that's the way you get a 14-point lead. Then we came out in the first four, or five to six possessions and I think we scored probably 75 percent of those early in the second half. You know it's crazy when John [Beilein]'s trying to call a timeout and we get a steal. It's about 14:40 I think when we get a steal and lay it up and we had a great deal of momentum, and all of a sudden then we stayed on the bench seven of the next eight minutes it seemed like, because he called a timeout then we had the 16-minute timeout, then we had the 12-minute timeout, so after that it was really ugly. That's really a good basketball team [Michigan]. It scares you to death the way they shoot the ball. It scares you to death the way their big guys play. [Moritz] Wagner, was a lone force. We didn't do a very good job on him at all. They made a bunch of their threes early, and then they missed more of them because they missed [the shots] than because of our defense. But, again, it was a pretty good working margin at that point. I was not pleased with some of the groups that I put in there but looking down there, Luke had 27 [points] on 16 shots, that's fantastic. Twelve [points] for Kenny [Williams] and 17 [points] for Joel [Berry II]. I thought Joel had made the layup, I was trying to get the substitutes in and then the ball spun out on us. For us, it was a good bounce back after such a disappointment the way we played on Sunday."

On where this team is defensively
"Still, we're not protecting the ring very well. Isaiah [Hicks] would block a shot. Kennedy [Meeks] would block a shot. Tony [Bradley] would block a shot. We're not doing much of that around the basket. Teams are having their way with us inside but on the perimeter we're doing okay. We're getting better. We have to get better because if we don't get better, we're not going to be a very good team. But we're trying to do a better job of guarding the three-point shot. So we're mediocre right now, but I do think we can get there. The biggest leap is going to be if our big guys start getting better defensively."

On feelings after Michigan State game
"Weren't very good. Wasn't very pleasant. We got back at 6:30 [a.m.] on Monday. I laid down at 7:15 [a.m.] and got up at 9 o'clock [a.m.] because it wasn't doing any good. Went and got a haircut to see if that would help me. I was willing to try anything. I'm not one of those coaches who's just going to say it was just a bad game. Let's go on. We spent 45 minutes yesterday watching the Michigan State tape before we watched the Michigan tape because if you make those kind of mistakes and have people outwork you with more intensity and more effort, you've got to show them and so we did that. Then we tried to move forward to Michigan but Joel and Theo, Kenny and Luke, I think those guys were really ready to play. Needless to say, that was good for us."

Michigan Head Coach John Beilein

Opening statement

"North Carolina might be that good and we're definitely not that bad, but we definitely played poorly today and we just got to take it. It reminds of… a couple years ago we went to SMU and we just couldn't get anything going, and we lost our confidence. There was a sequence in that first half where we couldn't make a play, and then we started exactly what I felt this team's the weakness [would be] this year is when we needed someone to settle down and make a play, we weren't ready to make a smart play at that time. It would turn into hero basketball, and it would end up creating offense for them. That's exactly what happened. They didn't miss shots… they're not as well-oiled as they were last year yet, but they've got really good talent. Williams came out just stroking the ball and we did too, but we went out of that and got a little uncharacteristic of ourselves and got what we deserved."

On North Carolina having 17 assists on its first 21 field goals

"I don't even think anybody missed a shot in the beginning. I think we might have had a lot of assists that half too. They're really moving the ball well. Luke Maye is a really tough match-up for us. We're playing really small with Duncan Robinson as a skinny 4-man and it's really a bad match-up. It hurt us. That's where DJ Wilson would have been today. We're trying to get a freshman, Isaiah Livers, ready, and when they play through Luke, got an incredibly talented point guard, everything else sort of flows, and Williams was hitting shots, they were tough for us to play today. They just came from Portland. We just came from Hawaii. We looked like we were in a daze today, not them. "

On defensive effort. Was it as simple as not containing the driver?

"I don't think we were ready for the quickness, speed and the precision that they run with. We weren't locked in defensively. I can't tell you why. We've seen it before. We laid an egg for most of the first half defensively, half of the first half offensively and I got to find out the reasons behind it. I'm not smart enough to get that right now."

On depth of team

"I don't know who those next guys are. If you know, you can let me know. We're trying to figure it out. That's why we said the heck with it in the second half, down thirty, let's let the young guys play, and they played really well. Some of it was against their second team, but they did alright. We got to grow. Just watch this team grow. We started out with five wide-open threes in the second half. With a couple of stops, it could have changed the game. We didn't make any of them. We usually don't get that open. They did a great job of getting extra shots. We just weren't good. I don't think we had the grit in that first half. We haven't had success when things go wrong over and over again. I told them our best defense tonight would be our offense. Shorten the possessions, take really good shots, don't turn the ball over. Sometimes you'd like to say, 'They'll learn over time', they'll learn from this really quickly. They'll learn."

On freshmen playing first true road game

"They did okay. You're playing your first true road game, playing the defending national champions, and it's probably not the easiest way to get it started. They're making incremental steps every day."

On Coach Roy Williams, playing him for the first time.

"He knows my name. He talks to me. When we both go on recruiting, I'm a guy who sits in the bleachers and sort of minds my own business. I don't talk with a whole lot of people and he and I just… I don't know if he's like that too, but I like talking to him. "

On lack of defensive rebounding

"We've been really good at that, but we've never seen anything like [Theo] Pinson and [Luke] Maye that go to the boards that hard. We've played good teams, not with that talent and knack of getting rebounds. So much action was going on, and all of a sudden the box out came. They didn't miss much the first half. But when they miss and get it back, it's difficult to get yourselves back up and keep going. It was disheartening. We deserve what we got, and they deserve what they got. Losing on Sunday didn't hurt them one bit. They came back with a vengeance towards us, and we could not answer. We couldn't answer.

On playing against UNC's high tempo style of play

"Our offense could have been our defense. If we could have been a bit more patient. A little bit more precise. We could have hung in there, score points. Obviously transition defense is a lot easier when you score a bucket. We just went a little crazy. We'll get better. This is a great teaching point. It's the model story you want, the kids go in there, they feel it, they touch it, they smell it, and now they know what it's like afterwards."

North Carolina Players
Theo Pinson, Senior Forward

On young players stepping up
"Especially with the starting group with Garrison [Brooks], we needed one guy to help the starters as far as the one new guy to come in and understand what we do on the defensive end. The starting group did a good job. Everybody is getting better, but at the same time, it's going to be a learning process. We still have to get better. We saw it in the Michigan State game. We didn't play the greatest on defense either, so it was a wake-up call and we're doing better."

On this season's learning curve following 2016-17 season
"Last year, that was a little bit of our problem. We didn't play that well defensively, and when we did we figured out that we win games and even if you don't shoot well, you can still win games if you play well defensively. We're understanding that, and having Kenny [Williams] back out there is really a big part in our defensive intensity. Joel [Berry], being a four-year guy and understanding, starts with him up top-pressuring the ball and Kenny getting the deflections and me using my length as much as I can to bother the other team's best scorer."

On Luke Maye's strong night
"Like I said, I told y'all before, I'm not shocked at anything Luke [Maye] does. He's a match up problem. I just thank God we finally got a stretch-four who can shoot threes, who we can use instead of other teams using against us."

Joel Berry II, Senior Guard

On extra attention to offense following the Michigan State loss
"It's always good when the ball is going through the basket, but the biggest thing is we just wanted to play with more effort, more energy. Just overall, they didn't shoot the ball as well as everybody thought they did. They just had more energy and effort and paying attention to detail. So, that was the biggest thing – just coming out with more energy. The ball went in the basket for us and that's always good, but overall I feel like we did a good job just bringing some energy tonight."

On his ankle
"It wasn't a tweak. It kind of scared me a little bit. You know last year I had problems with my ankles. More than anything, it just scared me and that's why I ran back. Just making sure that everything was okay, but I'm good now."

On feelings about team at this point in the season
"I don't think where we want to be, but I think we're getting close. We went out there Sunday, didn't play as well. We came out tonight and we did pretty good, paid attention to detail. We just have to get guys to buy into the system. It's hard to get young guys to buy into what Coach [Williams] wants to do, but once they understand that – I mean he's a Hall of Fame coach so he knows what he's doing. We won a national championship last year so if we just get them to understand that that's what you have to do to stay on the court and help this team and it's not about just individuals. It's about what we're doing as a whole and we'll get to where we want to be."

Kenny Williams, Junior Guard

On coming back after the tournament last week
"It was great. I think everyone was excited to be back home. We were out there for so long, so to be back here was a great feeling. I got those goosebumps running out of the tunnel again. I think that tells how long I've been away."

Garrison Brooks, Freshman Forward

On attitude coming into this game
"Your energy level and your 'want to' has to be higher than their 'want to.' That's what coach always told us. That really mattered to us today because their want to Sunday was higher than ours."

Luke Maye, Junior Forward

On bounce back win
"It was huge. We really did a good job playing together and started off hot. Both teams did. We tried to get stops and they banked in a three at the last second of the shot clock. It was back and forth, but I thought we got stops when we needed them and kind of built a lead. A little sloppy in the end, but a great team win for us."

On offensive improvement of team
"It was okay. Sometimes we were kind of stagnant, but when you got guys like Kenny [Williams] and Joel [Berry] that can fill it up from the outside, and Theo [Pinson] can make plays from wherever. It is really great to have that kind of versatility. Garrison [Brooks] had some great dunks inside and we rebounded the ball pretty well, so it was good to have all those guys play well."

Players Mentioned

Joel Berry II

Garrison Brooks

Luke Maye

Theo Pinson

Kenny Williams

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