Colorado-Baylor Quotes
Colorado vs. Baylor
Feb. 22, 2025, CU Events Center
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“We made that a little bit harder than we needed to down the stretch, there's no doubt about that. We made it interesting, and it shouldn't have been. So we've got to learn from that. But I was proud of our guys' fight and competitiveness. I felt good at shoot-around this morning. I thought we had two good days of prep, practice wise. I can't say enough about Norchad Omier and the kind of player he is. Holy cow. He's such a beast inside, scoring, rebounding. He had four offensive rebounds at halftime, and I thought the key to the game is he ended up with four. We did a much better job of cracking down and having our guards help us rebound. Andrej Jakimovski did a great job of that with seven defensive boards, but we did a much better job in the second half than we did in the first half. We held him to 25%(FG shooting) in the first half, and we're down two because we couldn't box them out and we turned the ball over eight times, which is who we are. But a good win against a quality team, quality program, and they were down a shooter with (Jayden) Nunn not being here, which was a good hop (bounce) for us. We'll take it. We need some good hops (bounces), but good win, not easy, good and we can learn, learn a lot from it, too.”
On Andrej Jakimovski’s performance
“I mean, to hold VJ Edgecombe to eight points, he's a future lottery pick, is an unbelievable job by him. We talked about trying to be a team and be in the gaps and I thought we did a pretty good job on that as well. But Andrej deserves a lot of credit. But to have seventeen points, seven rebounds, five assists and zero turnovers and he made some threes (pointers). That's what seniors do down the stretch of their senior year, and you need your seniors to play well because, look. RJ (Smith) made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Sebastian (Rancik) made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Bangot Dak made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Andrej has and I assume that Trevor (Baskin) and Elijah (Malone) have as well. And I thought Elijah Malone's minutes in the second half and Trevor baskets minutes in the second half were really critical for us winning. We're plus five with Elijah on the floor, and we're plus 10 with Trevor on the floor. Hasn't been like that here recently. So kudos to those guys for being ready as well.”
On the morale of the team after two Big-12 wins
“The morale of this team hasn't hasn't wavered. I give them credit for that. You come to our practices, you come to our shoot-arounds, you come to our pregame meals, whatever it is the morale of this team has not been down. They're frustrated, they're disappointed. There's no doubt about that. We are coaches. Nobody likes losing. But I said this a few weeks ago, you can't fault their effort. Now I challenged them with their toughness after watching the Iowa State Film. I didn't feel like it after the game, but you learn so much more as a coach when you go back and watch the film. I really felt like their toughness needed to get better. The only way we were going to win today is if we're tough and the only way we win on Monday is if we play with unbelievable toughness. I thought our guys did that for the most part, didn't play perfect, made mistakes, but the morale of this team has been great for what we've been through and what our record is, and that's a testament to the character of the guys that are in that locker room. And that's something that we are recruiting. You want size, you want skill, but the non negotiable for me is character. We've got high character kids in this program.”
On Colorado’s defensive performance tonight
“[V.J.] Edgecombe is a future lottery pick. [Jeremy] Roach went to Duke and has played in some big games. [Norchard] Omier is a monster inside. [Langston] Love got it going in that first half. The defense, 25% in that first half, was fantastic. We just should have been up 10 instead of down two, but we weren't. We kept battling, but again, you have to do something at a high level to win these games, and tonight, our defense was at a high level.”
On coming back after first half turnovers
“It says a lot. It says that maybe they're learning and maybe can turn things around. That's part of toughness. When I say toughness, it's not just hitting somebody or knocking them. Part of it's getting through screens and boxing out, things like that, but the other part of toughness is the mental part. That is, I'm not playing well in the first half, I'm going to turn around in the second half, whether it's as a group or individually. I said this yesterday, this is going to be one of those teams as we come down the stretch, guys are going to play more if they're playing better. Tonight, I thought Trevor [Baskin] and Elijah [Malone] played better. They played more in the second half than they did in the first. I thought Bangot Dak and Sebi [Rancik] keep getting better. Andrej [Jakimovski] obviously played extremely well tonight. That's why he played 32 minutes. Julian [Hammond], I thought played terrific tonight. It's going to be different guys on different nights for this team, and everybody in that locker room, I hope, understands that now. They may not like it, I get that, but that's where we're at.”
On trusting Sebastian Rancik
“I've got trust in him because I think Sebi is not afraid. He's got great skill. If they trap us and we throw it back to him, he's got the ability to put the ball on the floor. He's a good free throw shooter. Now, the turnover he had, throwing the ball behind the back carelessly to Julian, that can't happen. That is a freshman mistake that could have cost us a game. BD's missed dunk could have cost us a game. We’ve got to finish better. Again, those kids have never been in that situation before. The last play of the game, Trevor misses the first free throw, we say miss the second one on purpose, and Omier gets the rebound and passes it to Roach. Well, that pass should never happen, it should never get to Roach. It can't get to Roach and have a half court shot that could easily go in, those are the little things that our young guys have to learn. Again, they've never been in this situation before, certainly in Big 12 play. We haven't had to protect the lead, except against Central Florida, and tonight, we didn't do a very good job of that. Again, opportunities to learn and improve, and that's all I'm concerned with, as a coach, to get our team better. Get our players better, make them understand we've got to be better tomorrow than we were today, and experience is the best teacher there is.”
On playing at home; preparing for Kansas on Monday
“It hadn't been pretty. We didn't play our best against Central Florida and we didn't play our best today, but I thought we competed better today, and we defended better today, against a really good team that has some really good players. We're gonna play another really good team on Monday, that's maybe been struggling a little bit, but we all know KU’s history. I hope we have this place rocking and rolling with CU fans, not KU fans, and we'll see what that's like Monday night at nine o'clock. In terms of how we prepare and what we're going to try to do to win a game, we're going to go right back to the drawing board and try to try to win one on Monday night. it's not going to be easy, just like today wasn’t easy.”
On playing in front of CU fans; home court atmosphere
“It means a lot to me, personally. I know it means a lot to our players. It's easy for people to jump off the bandwagon when you're having a season like this. It's a testament to our fans. The one thing I've said this conference season is our fans have given our team more this year than our team has given our fans. That hurts me, and it disappoints me as a coach. Because I felt like in the previous 14 years, whether we're good or bad, our team has given sometimes more than the fans have. But this year it's been kind of flipped. So thanks to them. We're going to need them on Monday night.”
Colorado Players
Andrej Jakimovski, Gr., F
On mindset going into game and holding off V.J. Edgecombe
“He's a great player, and he's shooting the ball good in conference play between 40% so I just knew that I had to do a good job on him to win the game. And I take pride in defense, and I think I did a pretty good job on him tonight, so I'm glad that we won the game.”
On limiting offensive shots
“I think we were pretty good defensive team. We were switching the defense a lot. We were fighting back with a five, and we were switching one to five. And I think every guy that played tonight did a really good job on defense. They shot 36% from the field, which is really good, and we knew that we needed to do that in order to win the game.”
On balancing number of rebounds throughout the game
“We knew that they're a really good rebounding team, especially Omier. He got 13 rebounds on us and they miss a lot of shots, so we knew that we need to box out and do a better job in second half. And he didn't get any rebounds in the second half. So that was the key doing the game.”
On team improving getting closer to March
“100%. We just need one win, and it was a really tough stretch, and once we got the first win, we got our confidence back, and we kind of trusted each other, and we've been practicing really hard. Every guy is putting in extra work, and our chemistry is great. We seem connected on the board now, and we'll keep improving. Tomorrow we have another practice to get ready for Kansas on Monday. It's a quick turnaround, but we'll be ready for Kansas on Monday as well.”
On getting more defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds
“They're a really good transition team. So we were kind of worried about them scoring on fast break. So we didn't go every time to the glass so that was one of the reasons.”
Sebastian Rancik, Fr., F
On flow of the offense
“It was great. We do this every day in practice, but so far this season has been a challenge to kind of bring it over to the games. So it's been a really good feeling to translate to the game, and it felt great to be out there. We were playing for one and each other, and we were playing really selflessly.”
On getting more defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds
“It's a mentality to get offensive rebounds, and we just need to be more motivated and have a bigger drive to go grab those balls. I think it'll come.”
On putting things together as a team
“It definitely showed a lot of toughness from our part. I think they went on like an 8-0 run late in the second half, and we stuck together, and we got some really important stops and grabbed really huge defensive rebounds and limited them to only one shot. That was huge. Just to show that toughness is definitely going to give us momentum and confidence as a group going forward.”
Baylor Head Coach Scott Drew
Opening Statement
“I have a lot of respect for Coach Boyle. He does a terrific job. He's had his guys fight all year. People look at Colorado's record and it's not indicative of how many opportunities they've had to win. They got over the hump with Central Florida, and obviously they continued that with us today. 21 for 25 from the free throw line is tremendous execution by them, and that wins a lot of games. We didn't turn them over as much as we wanted. I was proud of our guys on the glass. I thought we did a good job on the glass, but too many missed layups, too many missed open shots, and then most of all, in the second half we didn't do a very good job defensively. In the first half we were bad offensively, but pretty good defensively. In the second half, we weren't very good at all. Credit to them, they did a good job attacking and getting to the rim.”
On what you saw from the battle between VJ and Jakimovski
“Well, I think Colorado's lineup is real. They have a lot of length, and when they don't turn the ball over and get back on defense, it's not easy to score against him. That's why we were trying to turn them over more, which our defense didn't do. Obviously VJ didn't score well or finish well, but he had seven assists, one turnover, and four offensive rebounds. So I’m proud of that effort.”
On the key to getting more consistency out of Langston throughout the length of the game
“That's the frustrating part with basketball sometimes. One half you're good defensively, one half you're bad. One half you're good offensively, one half you're bad. We always try to say, control what you can control. I thought our effort and our attention to detail defensively needed to be a lot better in the second half. You have to credit Colorado's execution for making us look bad. At the end of the day, we didn’t want to give Jakimovski three’s, and he was five for nine. Credit them for finding him and knocking them down. Credit them for getting to the line 25 times, because that's a winning recipe.”
Coach on rebounds
“We out rebounded them 14 to five on the offensive glass, so normally that's good enough to win. 36% from the field, their length must have bothered us because we missed a lot of layups.”
Coach on playing in CU Events Center
“I know this year isn’t as successful record wise as last year, but I thought the game management was tremendous. People were really hospitable. Everyone knows Tad does a great job. It's a really hard place to get a win. That's because of the fans and the staff.”
Feb. 22, 2025, CU Events Center
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“We made that a little bit harder than we needed to down the stretch, there's no doubt about that. We made it interesting, and it shouldn't have been. So we've got to learn from that. But I was proud of our guys' fight and competitiveness. I felt good at shoot-around this morning. I thought we had two good days of prep, practice wise. I can't say enough about Norchad Omier and the kind of player he is. Holy cow. He's such a beast inside, scoring, rebounding. He had four offensive rebounds at halftime, and I thought the key to the game is he ended up with four. We did a much better job of cracking down and having our guards help us rebound. Andrej Jakimovski did a great job of that with seven defensive boards, but we did a much better job in the second half than we did in the first half. We held him to 25%(FG shooting) in the first half, and we're down two because we couldn't box them out and we turned the ball over eight times, which is who we are. But a good win against a quality team, quality program, and they were down a shooter with (Jayden) Nunn not being here, which was a good hop (bounce) for us. We'll take it. We need some good hops (bounces), but good win, not easy, good and we can learn, learn a lot from it, too.”
On Andrej Jakimovski’s performance
“I mean, to hold VJ Edgecombe to eight points, he's a future lottery pick, is an unbelievable job by him. We talked about trying to be a team and be in the gaps and I thought we did a pretty good job on that as well. But Andrej deserves a lot of credit. But to have seventeen points, seven rebounds, five assists and zero turnovers and he made some threes (pointers). That's what seniors do down the stretch of their senior year, and you need your seniors to play well because, look. RJ (Smith) made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Sebastian (Rancik) made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Bangot Dak made some mistakes, he's never been in this position. Andrej has and I assume that Trevor (Baskin) and Elijah (Malone) have as well. And I thought Elijah Malone's minutes in the second half and Trevor baskets minutes in the second half were really critical for us winning. We're plus five with Elijah on the floor, and we're plus 10 with Trevor on the floor. Hasn't been like that here recently. So kudos to those guys for being ready as well.”
On the morale of the team after two Big-12 wins
“The morale of this team hasn't hasn't wavered. I give them credit for that. You come to our practices, you come to our shoot-arounds, you come to our pregame meals, whatever it is the morale of this team has not been down. They're frustrated, they're disappointed. There's no doubt about that. We are coaches. Nobody likes losing. But I said this a few weeks ago, you can't fault their effort. Now I challenged them with their toughness after watching the Iowa State Film. I didn't feel like it after the game, but you learn so much more as a coach when you go back and watch the film. I really felt like their toughness needed to get better. The only way we were going to win today is if we're tough and the only way we win on Monday is if we play with unbelievable toughness. I thought our guys did that for the most part, didn't play perfect, made mistakes, but the morale of this team has been great for what we've been through and what our record is, and that's a testament to the character of the guys that are in that locker room. And that's something that we are recruiting. You want size, you want skill, but the non negotiable for me is character. We've got high character kids in this program.”
On Colorado’s defensive performance tonight
“[V.J.] Edgecombe is a future lottery pick. [Jeremy] Roach went to Duke and has played in some big games. [Norchard] Omier is a monster inside. [Langston] Love got it going in that first half. The defense, 25% in that first half, was fantastic. We just should have been up 10 instead of down two, but we weren't. We kept battling, but again, you have to do something at a high level to win these games, and tonight, our defense was at a high level.”
On coming back after first half turnovers
“It says a lot. It says that maybe they're learning and maybe can turn things around. That's part of toughness. When I say toughness, it's not just hitting somebody or knocking them. Part of it's getting through screens and boxing out, things like that, but the other part of toughness is the mental part. That is, I'm not playing well in the first half, I'm going to turn around in the second half, whether it's as a group or individually. I said this yesterday, this is going to be one of those teams as we come down the stretch, guys are going to play more if they're playing better. Tonight, I thought Trevor [Baskin] and Elijah [Malone] played better. They played more in the second half than they did in the first. I thought Bangot Dak and Sebi [Rancik] keep getting better. Andrej [Jakimovski] obviously played extremely well tonight. That's why he played 32 minutes. Julian [Hammond], I thought played terrific tonight. It's going to be different guys on different nights for this team, and everybody in that locker room, I hope, understands that now. They may not like it, I get that, but that's where we're at.”
On trusting Sebastian Rancik
“I've got trust in him because I think Sebi is not afraid. He's got great skill. If they trap us and we throw it back to him, he's got the ability to put the ball on the floor. He's a good free throw shooter. Now, the turnover he had, throwing the ball behind the back carelessly to Julian, that can't happen. That is a freshman mistake that could have cost us a game. BD's missed dunk could have cost us a game. We’ve got to finish better. Again, those kids have never been in that situation before. The last play of the game, Trevor misses the first free throw, we say miss the second one on purpose, and Omier gets the rebound and passes it to Roach. Well, that pass should never happen, it should never get to Roach. It can't get to Roach and have a half court shot that could easily go in, those are the little things that our young guys have to learn. Again, they've never been in this situation before, certainly in Big 12 play. We haven't had to protect the lead, except against Central Florida, and tonight, we didn't do a very good job of that. Again, opportunities to learn and improve, and that's all I'm concerned with, as a coach, to get our team better. Get our players better, make them understand we've got to be better tomorrow than we were today, and experience is the best teacher there is.”
On playing at home; preparing for Kansas on Monday
“It hadn't been pretty. We didn't play our best against Central Florida and we didn't play our best today, but I thought we competed better today, and we defended better today, against a really good team that has some really good players. We're gonna play another really good team on Monday, that's maybe been struggling a little bit, but we all know KU’s history. I hope we have this place rocking and rolling with CU fans, not KU fans, and we'll see what that's like Monday night at nine o'clock. In terms of how we prepare and what we're going to try to do to win a game, we're going to go right back to the drawing board and try to try to win one on Monday night. it's not going to be easy, just like today wasn’t easy.”
On playing in front of CU fans; home court atmosphere
“It means a lot to me, personally. I know it means a lot to our players. It's easy for people to jump off the bandwagon when you're having a season like this. It's a testament to our fans. The one thing I've said this conference season is our fans have given our team more this year than our team has given our fans. That hurts me, and it disappoints me as a coach. Because I felt like in the previous 14 years, whether we're good or bad, our team has given sometimes more than the fans have. But this year it's been kind of flipped. So thanks to them. We're going to need them on Monday night.”
Colorado Players
Andrej Jakimovski, Gr., F
On mindset going into game and holding off V.J. Edgecombe
“He's a great player, and he's shooting the ball good in conference play between 40% so I just knew that I had to do a good job on him to win the game. And I take pride in defense, and I think I did a pretty good job on him tonight, so I'm glad that we won the game.”
On limiting offensive shots
“I think we were pretty good defensive team. We were switching the defense a lot. We were fighting back with a five, and we were switching one to five. And I think every guy that played tonight did a really good job on defense. They shot 36% from the field, which is really good, and we knew that we needed to do that in order to win the game.”
On balancing number of rebounds throughout the game
“We knew that they're a really good rebounding team, especially Omier. He got 13 rebounds on us and they miss a lot of shots, so we knew that we need to box out and do a better job in second half. And he didn't get any rebounds in the second half. So that was the key doing the game.”
On team improving getting closer to March
“100%. We just need one win, and it was a really tough stretch, and once we got the first win, we got our confidence back, and we kind of trusted each other, and we've been practicing really hard. Every guy is putting in extra work, and our chemistry is great. We seem connected on the board now, and we'll keep improving. Tomorrow we have another practice to get ready for Kansas on Monday. It's a quick turnaround, but we'll be ready for Kansas on Monday as well.”
On getting more defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds
“They're a really good transition team. So we were kind of worried about them scoring on fast break. So we didn't go every time to the glass so that was one of the reasons.”
Sebastian Rancik, Fr., F
On flow of the offense
“It was great. We do this every day in practice, but so far this season has been a challenge to kind of bring it over to the games. So it's been a really good feeling to translate to the game, and it felt great to be out there. We were playing for one and each other, and we were playing really selflessly.”
On getting more defensive rebounds than offensive rebounds
“It's a mentality to get offensive rebounds, and we just need to be more motivated and have a bigger drive to go grab those balls. I think it'll come.”
On putting things together as a team
“It definitely showed a lot of toughness from our part. I think they went on like an 8-0 run late in the second half, and we stuck together, and we got some really important stops and grabbed really huge defensive rebounds and limited them to only one shot. That was huge. Just to show that toughness is definitely going to give us momentum and confidence as a group going forward.”
Baylor Head Coach Scott Drew
Opening Statement
“I have a lot of respect for Coach Boyle. He does a terrific job. He's had his guys fight all year. People look at Colorado's record and it's not indicative of how many opportunities they've had to win. They got over the hump with Central Florida, and obviously they continued that with us today. 21 for 25 from the free throw line is tremendous execution by them, and that wins a lot of games. We didn't turn them over as much as we wanted. I was proud of our guys on the glass. I thought we did a good job on the glass, but too many missed layups, too many missed open shots, and then most of all, in the second half we didn't do a very good job defensively. In the first half we were bad offensively, but pretty good defensively. In the second half, we weren't very good at all. Credit to them, they did a good job attacking and getting to the rim.”
On what you saw from the battle between VJ and Jakimovski
“Well, I think Colorado's lineup is real. They have a lot of length, and when they don't turn the ball over and get back on defense, it's not easy to score against him. That's why we were trying to turn them over more, which our defense didn't do. Obviously VJ didn't score well or finish well, but he had seven assists, one turnover, and four offensive rebounds. So I’m proud of that effort.”
On the key to getting more consistency out of Langston throughout the length of the game
“That's the frustrating part with basketball sometimes. One half you're good defensively, one half you're bad. One half you're good offensively, one half you're bad. We always try to say, control what you can control. I thought our effort and our attention to detail defensively needed to be a lot better in the second half. You have to credit Colorado's execution for making us look bad. At the end of the day, we didn’t want to give Jakimovski three’s, and he was five for nine. Credit them for finding him and knocking them down. Credit them for getting to the line 25 times, because that's a winning recipe.”
Coach on rebounds
“We out rebounded them 14 to five on the offensive glass, so normally that's good enough to win. 36% from the field, their length must have bothered us because we missed a lot of layups.”
Coach on playing in CU Events Center
“I know this year isn’t as successful record wise as last year, but I thought the game management was tremendous. People were really hospitable. Everyone knows Tad does a great job. It's a really hard place to get a win. That's because of the fans and the staff.”