UNC-Boston College Postgame Quotes

POSTGAME QUOTES
UNC 102, BOSTON COLLEGE 96 (OT)
JANUARY 25, 2025
DEAN E. SMITH CENTER, CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

Boston College Head Coach Earl Grant
On Pace of the game…
"Really high pace [game], electric environment. The guys played well"

On how UNC created their advantages…
"I thought Elliot Cadeau was the guy that stirred everything up for them. It's really hard to keep him out of the paint, so you have to bring two to the ball. He did a good job at finding his bigs on the short roll. Their perimeter players actually made some crucial threes, making three or four crucial threes. Their percentages didn't indicate that they would make those shots but they made them and give them credit…Give them guys credit but I think Elliot Cadeau was the guy stirring everything up making us bring two to the ball and finding their bigs in the short roll."

UNC Head Coach Hubert Davis
On the defense…
"I do believe that for the last 18.6 seconds and for overtime we were locked in defensively. We got the stops that we needed, the deflections, the steals that we needed to be able to get us back in the game and eventually win it."

On Seth Trimble starting…
"I felt like that would be good for us to start the game, his experience and leadership, to start the game, and then in the second half, we weren't playing any defense so I just put the five guys out there who I felt could possibly get a stop."

On Ty Claude…
"The guy who changed the game for us was Tyzhaun. He was in the game for five minutes during that first stretch there and his energy and effort changed the entire game for us."

On playing at Carolina…
"Playing here is more than just playing here. I've told them my story and they know everything significant in my life has happened here. I didn't just go to school here, I didn't just graduate from here. This is where I became a Christian. This is where I fell in love with my wife. This is where we got married. This is where I bought my first house. This is where we decided to raise our three kids. This is not just a job. This is my home and it's the home of all the other coaches too. Every other coach, because they experienced this place, can say the same things. When you put on that uniform, when you're in that locker room, when you run through that tunnel and you play on that floor, it's more than just basketball."

Seth Trimble
On the overtime period…
"We were fortunate enough to put ourselves in the position to go into overtime. We just made a commitment to get that win. You know we were on the home court. We don't like to lose. We definitely don't like to lose in overtime. We don't want to lose at home. So we made sure we did everything we needed to do just to lock in and get those stops."

On leaning into the team's defensive identity…
"Coaches every day are doing a great job of emphasizing it. Emphasizing our principles and what we need to do. It's just going to have to be players buying and really just craving to play defense and wanting to get stops on the defensive end."

On his final overtime play and coming back from injury…
"Just me finally being able to get in my rhythm and play my game. I honestly don't even remember the play that I made. I have just been working each and every day to continue to get better and kinda get back to the Seth that was here four weeks ago. Just to get back to that Seth. I think each and every day I am making more and more progress to that. And I think today showed that."

Ian Jackson
On how the team finds a way to lean more into a defensive identity…
"[We have to] become more of a better group. We need to hold each other accountable a little bit more and play with a little bit more of a chip on our shoulder coming into games– not when we're down or when we're coming back, just at the start of the games.

On what had to change to make sure they didn't lose a one-possession game again…
"We realized that we have to do the little things to get it done, and we got it done today: we got stops, we made shots, and we won the game… Box-outs, understanding where to be on defense, understanding who's who's, what coverage you're supposed to be in. Just being in the right spot at the right time, [and] having trust in your teammates for them to be in the right spot at the right time."

On what changed in the inbound at the end of the game…
"I feel like on the defensive end we took a huge pride in getting that stop. We knew they couldn't get the ball in, and we needed to do anything for them to not get the ball in [to win]. And we did it."

RJ Davis
On what it took to get the overtime win…
"It took everybody on the court and everybody on the bench, it was a group effort the way we persevered and were resilient towards the end. It was huge because we kind of put ourselves in that position a little bit. But the way we battled and fought to the end, we got a lot of crucial defensive stops, and we were able to execute on the offensive end, I mean that's big time for us."

On what this win means to him…
"I'm taking this win, I know it was ugly, but a win is a win. We're at a point right now where we're just trying to stack some wins and we'll take the wins how they come. So, it was ugly today, but it'll go up on the scoreboard as a W so we're good."

On Drake Powell helping with a big defensive stop…
"We had turned the ball over and our mindset was, we were going to get this defensive stop. And Drake (Powell) was phenomenal on the ball, made a huge impact, kind of just pressuring them till he got a deflection and the ball got out of bounds, but then forced them to a five second call."

Drake Powell
On the actions from the last few minutes of regulation…
"We just wanted to put our foot on the gas pedal and to keep going. We didn't really have that sense of urgency in the first half on the defensive end. I thought we got anything we wanted on the offensive end. But we just picked up our level of intensity.

On what allowed the intensity to pick up…
"Listening to our leaders: RJ, Seth, and Jalen Wahington. But James Brown also stepped up in a big way and gave us a speech. Then we just continued to trust each other and our intensity picked up."

Jalen Washington
On their success getting to the basket…
"Coming into the game, we knew that a lot of our middles put a lot of pressure on their defense, especially stuff like dive action, because they had to either guard the hole or guard RJ from the three. So you know, Elliot just did a good job. RJ did a good job. They hit me on those rolls and even on those kickouts to Ian in the corner. Just had to make the defence choose what they wanted to defend and give up."

On how they won the game…
"We were resilient. It doesn't matter how many games we lose, it doesn't matter what's going on, we are always gonna be resilient. We are gonna keep fighting. We're gonna find a way."

On what this type of win means to him…
"A win is a win in our book. Any opportunity we get out there to go and play is a big blessing for us. Did we want to play better? Did we want to have a better game? Yeah, but that's out of our control now."

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

James Brown

Elliot Cadeau

Ty Claude

RJ Davis

Ian Jackson

Drake Powell

Seth Trimble

Jalen Washington

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