Coach Boeheim Postgame Quotes
#16 Syracuse Men’s Basketball
vs. Rutgers
Wednesday, January 2, 2002
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY
Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim’s opening comments following the game against the Scarlet Knights:
“Obviously the key tonight was our defense, especially in the first half, it was exceptional. James (Thues) got his hands on everything. We were active, aggressive, patient. Early on, we weren’t making anything and our defense just held us in there. We still didn’t shoot the ball very well on the night, but our defense held us in there until we got a couple of good looks. Preston knocked down a couple of shots and Kueth knocked down a couple and we got control of the game.”
On Rutgers:
“Coleman shot the lights out. He was making some very difficult shots. To give the guy seven three’s and still win by 20 points is unusual. This was a good win. I watched Rutgers play. They won nine out of 10 games and they’re playing very good basketball. They had the Virginia game won and just fell away at the end of the game and Virginia’s a very, very good team, so this was a good, solid win.”
Boeheim on James Thues’ play:
“He’s a good defensive player. He’s active, he anticipates well. He made a couple of steals when they had a chance to go and get layups and he came up and made the play and got us layups. They were huge plays. He got his hands on a lot of balls. He had the steals and got them on their heels, but he also had a lot of deflections. It was a tremendous effort. He had a tremendous game tonight, I thought.”
On freshman center Craig Forth:
“His defense was good inside. He tipped the ball out of there, he deflected the ball and knocked it away a lot, got some rebounds. He was good.”
On his team’s spurt in the middle of the first half that broke the game open:
“We played well. We’re gonna do alright when we start making shots. We’ve got some guys who can shoot the ball. The difference in the first half and second half was that we got some transition baskets. We had a few more steals in the first half, got in transition and got some real good looks down there.”
