Opening Statement…
“I thought our guys did a really good job of having tremendous intensity throughout the game. It certainly amped up in the second half with our defense, even when our shooting wasn’t going the way that it needed to be. We had three stops in a row eight times, which is a huge number for us. It’s right up there with deflections. We had 42 deflections. Aaron Cook had 10. We had three stops in a row eight times. That’s big. That’s the kind of thing that’s the game within the game for us on the bench. For us, when we make it hard is when we don’t try and make the extra pass, or we try and drive into traffic. When we make it right, we’re trying to make the next pass, the ball is moving, we’re cutting. We got better at that tonight. We had to make some adjustments in the lineup at times to make sure we had that. Our guys just have to learn that that is how we play. The ball sticking or the ball not being thrown to the cutter, not reversed from side-to-side, not going through the paint are things that we can’t do. We have to continue to get better at that. Our shooting will get better, but tonight it was our defense. It was our rebounding. They are a very good team, a very good three-point shooting team. Our guys, for the most part, did a pretty good job of the adjustments we were trying to make to guard them over the last few days”
On Aaron Cook…
“I thought he did a really good job. The rebounds were big, the eight assists, the 10 points. He came out, and he was really moving. I was worried because we’ve been going straight since Wednesday. We practiced Wednesday, Thursday. We played Friday. We practiced Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We played today. Our guys aren’t used to that. I thought the energy that they played with, the way that he came out, the intensity that he had, the way that he moved the ball. With Christian [Wright] and Aaron [Cook] the other night, it was good, but it wasn’t great. Tonight, I thought it was much better. Aaron [Cook] has a lot to do with that because he can get out. We put him on the other team’s best three-point shooter, number four to start the game. He’s getting dogged the entire way up the court with the pressure. Sometimes we brought a screen up, sometimes we didn’t. He played a lot of minutes, and he never wore down. That shows the kind of veteran that he is.”
On how the team’s energy helped propel them to victory…
“I thought they really went well. I always worry about legs, especially with the shooting. They came out, and they were really moving defensively. The game is always giving you something. For us, it got us into bonus at the 10:07 mark in the second half. Then, you have to play according to that. Our guys are learning. It’s going to take a while with the chemistry. It’s going to take a while with rotations. We still do not understand all the game plan aspects that you have to have night-in and night-out. Tonight’s game plan will be different than what Saturday’s game plan is. You have to make adjustments, and that will take some time. To play that hard and that intense, and I thought our crowd was really good. They really helped us, really helped us. We’ll get better from that.
On a realistic timeframe of getting the chemistry between the team…
“I don’t think you put a timeframe on it. I mean it’s a lot of new guys, you know, some young, some old. They’re all new. It just takes time but we work at it every day, and you get better at it every day. If you improve a little bit every day, I know it sounds corny, but it’s really the truth, right? If you improve a little every day over a period of time, you’ve got something. The trick is that you don’t take a couple steps forward then take a couple steps back or take two or three steps forward then one step back. If you do take a step back, you got to kick it in, you got to go again. That’s where we’re at so I don’t have any crystal ball or any real view of that yet. I know they’re really hard working young guys. I know they’re in that gym a lot when they don’t need to be here, when they don’t have to be and that’s good. When you have that kind of spirit and work ethic, and we’ll get our togetherness right, and we’ll get our unity right, we’ll learn and it just takes time.”