UNC-Saint Francis Quotes

North Carolina 101, Saint Francis 76
Coach Roy Williams Quotes

Opening Statement:
"We had a couple of nice stretches. The whole game really. They cut it 58-52, then we had a 11-0 run there. Coby was a big part of that and I took him out and put Seventh in. Seventh was really good in the stretch there. He was not very good at all in the first half, but in the second half during that stretch I thought he was really good. I also thought Nassir was really active. Got the ball inside, got the ball of the boards. Nassir had 19 points, 7 rebounds. Those two guys during that stretch were the biggest players for us.

I like the fact, well, I don't like the fact that he is struggling with his shot, but Kenny Williams. How bout that? He's 1-for-5, but yet he has 9 assists, a career high for him. If somebody had missed a layup or something he could have probably got double figures. You like that. Twenty (points) for Cam.

We didn't shoot the ball particularly well. We had some good shots and didn't make them. The discouraging thing to me was that we put them on the free throw line so many times in the first half. They had 16 free throws and we had 5. It's not our game. We shot too many three's, didn't make enough of them. I still think we are going to be a good three point shooting team, but we are just not making them right now.

Rebounds, 36-to-47, I thought it would be better than that. They had 13 offensive rebounds to our 11. That makes every game they have played where they have more offensive rebounds than the other team. It is a little bit skewed because they shoot 34% and we shoot 52%. So there are more offensive rebounds available. I didn't like that. I talked to them before the game about making sure that didn't happen. A little frustrating at times, but the biggest frustration for me was the turnovers and putting them on the free throw line too much.

On freshmen turnovers and whether or not it is a part of the learning process
"If it is I wish they'd be frickin faster quicker learners. Luke had two. Seventh had two in the first half and none in the second half. Leaky had four. Coby had four. Nassir had one, so that's nine there. Coby can attack the basket. He made some silly plays. One he pitched ahead to Luke and Luke wasn't open. The very next play Sterling threw to somebody else and he wasn't open. I told them that it's pretty easy to find out that they are not open because we didn't catch the pass. That's the most discouraging thing, the 18 turnovers."

On the cause of the turnovers
"Not listening, not learning, all of those kind of things. Coach Smith used to say that turnovers are either selfishness or carelessness. Half of ours tonight were carelessness and half of them were selfishness. Trying to make a great play or you're careless with the basketball. We turned it over three times dribbling the ball. If you want to be good you don't turn the sucker over."

On Nassir Little's growth in the first five games of the season
"He's really active, I like that. He's in a tough situation right now. We are trying to teach him the four spot a little bit. For a freshman to go in and play more than one position, going across the line from three. Two/three is one player, four/five is another player. When you have to go across the line it's difficult. Leaky's having to do the same thing, so that's difficult for them. He's getting better. He doesn't have a great appreciation for the value of the basketball, even though he only had one turnover. I like how hard he plays. The first shot he made was a three banked in. It was not a good shot, but he made a couple of really good ones after that. I just like his activity on the boards. 8-for-9, that's not bad guys, I'd take that most nights."

On the rebounding improvement in the second half
"More attention to detail. It's just like the 18 turnovers, we had three turnovers in the last 55 seconds. Fifteen was bad enough, but you have three in the last 55 seconds. More attention to detail. Sterling gave us some good things too. Garrison four fouls in twelve minutes is not the kind of thing we need because he's played pretty well for us."

On Coby White's performance as a starter
"As I said in the last press conference, I'm really pleased with our point guards. Both of them. I do not like 1-4, that is not good. You like 5-6 from the foul line. You like 3-8 from the three point line. He knows he can play better than that. Seventh was, as I said, not very good in the first half, but during that stretch in the second half he was really good."

On the team's depth
"As you get into bigger, tougher games, your rotation goes down a little bit. When you get a chance you better play well because there might not be a second one coming. That's just the way it is. I am comfortable playing a lot of guys. Playing eleven guys with major minutes is really hard, eight or nine I'm really comfortable with. I got no problem with that."

On which is harder to develop chemistry for: offense or defense?
"A little bit of both. But the biggest thing is the season is so long. My gosh, we start practice on July 1st and play the last game June 30th. It's a frickin whole year. I like to play a lot of guys because it is a long season. I think you need, I do, I am not talking about anyone else. I could care less of what anybody else does, but I feel like we gotta build depth. You build depth by playing. The other thing is, I want to see how they play. I mean if I kept Seventh out of the game because of the way he played in the first half I would've missed something that was really good. So, we still keep giving guys chances. As I said, once you get down into tougher competition, you get into league play, the rotation tightens up a little bit."

On upcoming competition and whether coach is excited to see how the team handles it
"No. Cause right now I don't think I like how they are going to handle it. I told them that we have to have a good practice tomorrow, but we are getting ready to play a different animal. If we play like we did in some stretches tonight it will be very unpleasant for us. Some of our really good teams learned before you get to that stretch. You raise your attention span. You raise your intensity level. You focus on what you are supposed to do and not get caught up on things. Hopefully our team will do that because Texas, Michigan State and UCLA, that's pretty difficult. You know our schedule is so crazy."

Saint Francis Head Coach Rob Krimmel

Opening Statement:
"I surely appreciate North Carolina and Coach Williams allowing us to come down and compete against one of the most storied programs in basketball. Surely the tradition, the success that is here, our guys got to experience that and is something they will remember for the rest of their lives. They've got a really good team. They are number seven in the country for a reason. I'm proud of the way that our guys battled. We challenge them each step of the way to just chip away. We knew that they were going to do some things and it was going to be a tough game but we had to knock down some shots, make our free throws and take them out of transition. Easier said than done but for 40 minutes I asked our guys to give great effort, I asked our guys to execute and I think they did that. Carolina is a talented team with a lot of really good players but I thought our guys didn't back down for 40 minutes. That's something we will be able to build on and take with us as we continue to move down into non-conference and hopefully we will be able to draw on this experience later in January and February as we get ready for our conference play."

Players Mentioned

Nassir Little

Coby White

Kenny Williams

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