Colorado-Nicholls Quotes

Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle

General
"Obviously I'm not too pleased with the way we came out tonight. I thought our first half performance was pathetic in a lot of different ways. We had some guys who weren't here mentally tonight, and that's not going to work against a PAC-12 team. If we were playing a PAC-12 team tonight we'd be down 20 at halftime not five. We have to understand that. I'm just disappointed by our first half performance. We've got to learn from it and get better, and that's what we're going to do."

On rallying back in the 2^nd half again

"It's the fourth time in ten games that we've played poorly in the first half. This team wants to score its way out of their problems. This program is based on defense and rebounding. It's built for nights like tonight so at halftime instead of 33-38 its 33-27, because we defend and we rebound. Our mentality as a team right now is that we'll just score our way out of it, if they score 38 points we'll score 48 points. And we're capable of doing that on any night. But there's going to be nights like this in the PAC-12. We're going to face better defense, size and overall better basketball in the PAC-12. If we don't figure out what we'll be facing in the PAC-12, it's going to be a rude awaking on January 1^st when we tip-off against Cal. I don't think our players understand that, and if they did they wouldn't continue to let this happen. It's an issue we need to figure out. The mentality we need to have is to defend and rebound no matter what happens. We've got to figure out how to win on nights the ball is going into the basket."

On adjusting play when not making shots

"At halftime we told the team, that we aren't going to take a three point shot until the ball gets inside. One player had to come out three different times because it didn't happen, he couldn't figure that part out. The rest of the team did figure it out, and we shot 62 percent in the 2^nd half and shot 50 percent from three. We are a good shooting team, and the shots in the first half were good shots. But when they're not going in, you've got to figure out a different way. Our offensive rebounding was a big part of the game plan for us tonight. SMU had 24 offensive rebounds against Nicholls, we had 14. We've got to figure out that if the shots aren't going in that we need to defend and we have to rebound. When the shots are open you have to take them, but there's going to be nights were the shots aren't going in, nights when the free throws aren't going in. Going into tonight we were fist in the PAC-12 in free throw shooting, tonight we were awful in the first half, but we got better in the second half. We just have some room for improvement."

On Wesley Gordon's night

"Wesley Gordon was the player of the game tonight. He had five points on three shots, but he was absolutely the difference in the game and we couldn't take him off the floor in the second half. He changed the game defensively, and he blocked seven shots on the night. I thought Wesley was terrific. He made some good interior passes, and we played through him on the high post and he got some shooters some shots in the second half. I thought Wesley was terrific, and people will look at the box score and say he only got 5 points, but without a doubt Wesley was player of the game. We're going to watch the defense portion of the film as a coaching staff tonight, and we're going to pick out the guys who didn't guard and they're going to come in tomorrow morning. Those player's phones will be ringing in the morning. Wesley Gordon's phone won't be ringing. But some of the other guys will get that phone call, and we're going to watch film and get better. The NCAA has taken off the handcuffs and I can spend as much time as I need to get the team to perform better. Until we start classes in January we have a chance to make great strides, and players can individually make strides, since during this time they don't have class and they can get in the gym to work on what we need to work on.

On scouting for the weekend

"What we did was use Tuesday and Wednesday's practices to work on things that both Nicholls and Hampton do. We put some stuff in without telling the players which team we were working on since I didn't want the guys thinking ahead. As coached we worked on both teams this week. It is a quick turnaround but we will face that in the PAC-12 tournament. Our guys don't know Hampton's personal, so mentally we're going to have to step and play better. Hampton is a good basketball team, with good tough kids."

Colorado Players

Wesley Gordon, Jr., F

On second half adjustments

"We focused more on just defense. We've got to play better defense. It just looked bad on us as a program for us not to play defense the way we should've."

On good shooting night from Nicholls State

"If we want to win in the Pac (Pac-12 conference) then we just can't play defense that way and we all know it. We want to beat better teams and be a top 25 team and we just can't play defense that way because teams have been getting off on us so we've got to step up."

On poor three point shooting

"Yeah we're not going to make shots all of the time it's just a part of basketball so we really can't rely on our offense because sometimes the ball is going to go in and sometimes it's not so we've got to fall back on our defense. I think just by the way we've been shooting it lately we just fall on our offense."

Josh Fortune, Jr., G

On slow start in first half

"We didn't come out with a sharp mentality tonight as we normally should every game. We've just got to pick it up as a team tomorrow night."

On hot shooting night from Nicholls State

"Our defense, we're very particular about how our defense is. Closeouts weren't sharp and we weren't rotating trappers as we usually do in helping"

On avoiding double digit deficits

"Like Thomas said, it's just a matter of playing with pride and not letting teams come in our house and just play how they want to play, make any kind of shot, and feel like they can play with us. It's just about playing hard and playing with pride in our house."

On finals week schedule affecting slow start

"Nah everyone takes finals so it's not an excuse. It was kind of tough for us but you can't let that be an excuse for us."

Thomas Akyazili, Fr., G

On addressing slow starts

"We're a very deep team. If someone doesn't bring it than someone else can bring it and that's a positive thing, that more than one person can get it done."

On good shooting night from Nicholls State

"We gave them confidence and we just can't do that."

On coach Boyle's halftime and postgame message

"He just said that we need to play defense because in the first half we just didn't play defense; they had some easy layups, open three pointers. I think in the second half we had more energy. He said we have to take pride in playing defense and I think in the second half we did a better job."

On playing back to back games after sluggish performance

"Yeah because now coach wasn't very happy so now I think we can go out and make that up tomorrow."

Nicholls Head Coach J.P. Piper

On Playing Colorado
"I don't want another trip like this one. We're almost halfway through or just over halfway through. I was not pleased with the start at North Texas and I was even more displeased with the start at SMU. Couldn't have scripted it any better tonight; the way we got off the first 20 minutes, competed really hard on the defensive end, battled altitude, made shots, showed a lot of promise; so really really proud of what we got there. Honestly, that's a good basketball team and we just flat ran out of gas. They brought it at us in the second half and credit them, we couldn't answer the challenge, but some of that had to do with fatigue, some of it had to do with being on the road. No excuses, a good basketball team beat us tonight."

On Josh Scott "I thought we swarmed him really well in the first half. We didn't do as good a job of swarming in the second half, but I thought the adjustment that it appears to me that they made was they were very deliberate about beating us off the dribble versus the zone in the second half. The first half they were content to pass it around the perimeter and let us contest shots, and maybe make one interior pass or two interior passes. In the second half, they put their head down and came hard at the rim; forced us to rotate and allowed Josh to get a lot of free touches around the basket and I'm sure he got his butt chewed a little bit at halftime, as probably did all those guys. They played with a little bit more steam in the second half, but I was proud of our effort. I thought Liam Thomas did a tremendous job. Every time he had (Josh Scott) one-on-one, he did a great job of walling up and really forced a lot of passes. A lot for us to build on."

On This Game Helping Defense

"We're starting to figure it out. We're becoming a good team on the defensive end. I was aware of the three-point field goal percentage. I really wanted to go man to try to finish the game holding them down out there, I just didn't think we had enough juice in the tank to play man to man against that athleticism and length. Not surprise they found their range behind the three point line with us standing in the zone. They made a couple of tough shots, but they also had some shots where they could spin the ball on their hand and they had all day to hoist it up there and to their credit, they made them in the second half. I still feel like it's a moral victory for us that we held them under what they're averaging. It was certainly part of the game plan to try and limit their looks from the perimeter and I thought our guys responded well to that challenge."

On Tre O'Neal Playing In Colorado

"Tre really responded and played well in front of his hometown family. It's good to see him break through and have a good game. He had been playing with a little bit of a lack of confidence to be honest, and we've been pushing him to be more aggressive and you saw that tonight. I thought he played great minutes for us. When you couple out with Rillieux coming into his own defensively, we look really good out there at the top for 40 minutes.

On The First Half

"I think its depth. We kept rotating guys through. We have a couple kids who have asthma and then we're at altitude so I don't want to make an excuse; Colorado kicked our butt in the second half, but we had some issues that did not play well into the situation here and then foul trouble. Big boy gets four fouls, he's the most well-conditioned kid we have, take him off the floor and then those other guys are very limited in how long they can play so we reached a point where we really just ran out of gas and they were really able to do what they wanted. We were trying to crowd the lane and make them make perimeter shots and they made them. They got us some in transition. I thought some key plays in the game were we had one-on-one plays at the rim and they either blocked or created a miss and were able to get us in transition the other way. A couple of them were in ones and they were big swings. You take two off the board on our end and they get three on the other end, it's a five point swing and it happened a couple of times so I think that's what allowed them to separate. It was quick, we were right there nip and tuck, and you look up and all of a sudden we're down 15. Credit to them. That was a part of their game plan and we knew they were going to try to push the ball down our throat and play fast. That's part of the reason we stayed in the zone was to control tempo. If it had been a 30 minute game we might have had a chance. 40 minutes was a little too long for us."

On The Fans

"I think it's good. We were down after the SMU game. We really got humiliated in the first half of that game and I was worried that there would be a hangover today. That we were still lingering in the moment of that and I urged them after that game to let it go. It's a good team that just beat you. We've got to fight the next fight and I thought they responded well. I couldn't be prouder of the effort I got out of my guys. I told them before the game they need to leave here exhausted. They looked exhausted to me at the end of the game. That's really all I can ask. A better team beat us tonight."