University of North Carolina Athletics
UNC-Dayton Postgame Quotes
December 31, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 31, 2006
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Coach Roy Williams
Opening Statement:
"I felt that defensively in the first half we were really good. Offensively, if we hadn't had the turnovers, I would have really enjoyed that part of the floor also. I think we were careless with the basketball a couple times. When you have 21 turnovers you can't say it just your play, you have to give Dayton some credit. Their defense inside was very difficult for us. We had two or three offensive fouls on our post players because they were trying to do a good job of fighting around. Give [Dayton] credit for part of it, and we've got to do a better job ourselves and not turn the basketball over as much, but defensively again, I liked what we did. You know, the [Brian] Roberts kid is a little bit of a load for them, a load for the team that he's playing against. We really tried to cut down his percentage and tried to get a hand up every time he shot it. The big guys did a nice job of helping when he did penetrate past our perimeter guys. You know [Marcus] Johnson and [Monty] Scott making shots, we didn't want any of that. Again, I'll go back. I feel real good about what we did defensively. I'd like to have four or five guys in double figures, but again it was a low possession game because they were trying, not to hold it or anything, but they wanted a lower possession game. There's no question about that. Really I was pretty doggone pleased with most of the stuff that we did. You love to look down there and see Ty [Lawson] seven to one assist-turnover ratio and Danny [Green] seven to one assist-turnover ratio. You still don't like to add up to 21 turnovers, but we felt like we did some good things, and did some good things against a pretty good basketball team. We felt good going in, that we would have to really play, that if we didn't really play it could be a long day for us."
On Wes Miller playing a few more minutes:
"When Ty [Lawson] went down on that lay up attempt he landed right on his tail. That was bothering him at the end. That's the reason I believe I sat him down with seven or eight minutes to go because he was struggling with it. I was just happy it wasn't his hand because his tail has a good bit of padding down there. That was the most part of it."
On the defensive improvement possibly due to the freshmen learning more:
"I think practice. They're working really hard in practice. They're starting to take more pride in what they're doing defensively. Each and every day they're understanding more what the defensive end of the floor can mean for them. Again, we weren't very sharp offensively, now again give Dayton's defense credit for some of that, but when you hold a team to 21 percent in the first half you know that you're going to be OK regardless of what you're doing on offense and the offensive end. I think the practice time that we've been able to have and their attitude and their understanding and the experience of going through it a little bit more and understanding how capable the teams are that we're playing. I think all of it is involved, but experience and practice and just understanding how important it is is the biggest thing."
Dayton Coach Brian Gregory vs. North Carolina 12/31/06
Opening statement:
"We knew what a challenge it was going to be to coming in here. As I said, you are playing a team that is capable of winning the National Championship there's no doubt about it. They're deep enough, they're athletic enough, they're big enough, they have good guard play, the one thing I think that goes unnoticed is their unselfishness. When you look at a guy like Reyshawn Terry, he probably could be scoring 18 or 20 points from any place, but he gives his complete individual stats up for the team, he does all the things they need to do like get seven defensive rebounds, and three assists, and he is a senior and that's why they are so good. Going into the game, I knew one of things we wanted to make sure we did was really compete and play hard and I think we did that. Sometimes you get bogged down or caught up in the fact that you're not making any shots and we had some good shots in the first half, we just did not knock them down. Maybe a good shot that looks like a good shot is a little different against anyone else because maybe they're two or three inches closer and challenged a little more. I was proud with our guys over the last couple of weeks in terms of their fight and when you play a team like this you got to fight for forty minutes and you cannot let up and that's what ends up happening. They just kind of end up wearing you down both mentally and physically. I am pleased where we are at 10-3 heading into the Atlantic 10. We played two teams in the last week that could very easily be the Final Four National Championship type team. Now we got to move ahead."
On Carolina Defense:
"Its difficult. They really push up and so forth and you have to have two or three very good ball handlers in there at any one time because the one thing you can possibly do is stretch them and then drive them, but then they are so long inside. What they do is they force you to make a basketball play every single possession. Unfortunately this day and age they are not a lot of guys who could do that all the time and maybe a couple of them are playing on their team. The one thing I noticed is they forced us into 21 turnovers and we forced them into 21 turnovers too, so ours isn't half bad either. The thing that we need to get better at is some of the physical play because you got to be able to take a bump and still make some shots against this team. I mean they are not fouls that's the way the game is supposed to be played, I would rather have it more like a wrestling match than you cannot touch anybody and they're becoming a much more physical team and that will only benefit them."
