University of North Carolina Athletics
Player Quotes
December 4, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 4, 2008
What's the plan for you the next few days?
I'm just going to rehabilitate my ankle a little bit, do some strengthening, maybe take a couple of days off and see what happens.
Did Michigan State seem tired?
We just have so many guys. I still think they played well. I think they were physical. We just hit some shots and made some big runs.
Is there any significance to playing at the site of the Final Four?
We got a feel for the floor. That's different. But also, just the whole atmosphere, the building, how big it is - I'll look forward to it if it happens.
What did Coach Williams say about the first-half defense?
He told us we can't have that. He always does the points per possession and I think theirs was 0.91 at halftime. We want it lower than that. So he wasn't happy about that. We did have more possessions than the because of turnovers and offensive rebounds, so that was one positive. But for them to shot 20% in the second half was kind of a mix of they had an off night, their legs were out, but we were there some of the ties. They missed some easy ones, but I don't think there should have been that big of a gap in the score.
Were you guys able to tire them out?
They were running back at us. They say they want to run too so I don't know if they tired themselves out playing the schedule they did, playing the whole weekend down in Orlando, flying back and having a game right away. That may have been a factor. We were running just as much as they were. They caused some problems for us when they were running. But they did look like their legs weren't really into it in the second half.
Is transition defense a problem right now?
This game, it was. The first key to the game Coach Williams wrote on the board was five guys sprint back on d and in the first half, we really didn't do that. They got some easy lay-ups. He kind of got on us for that at halftime.
On the improved defensive play:
That's the main thing we wanted to work on. Last year, that was a weakness that we had so this year we're picking it up on that end and listening to what Coach says. I know I've picked it up, Wayne has and Deon. We're in better condition to play defense so that's why we're playing better defense now.
