Coach Boeheim Quotes
Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim
On the game:
“We gotta stop scheduling Manhattan because it just gives us a headache and I don’t need that kind of headache!
“I thought, the first half, our zone was just – we were just very stagnant. We just watched (Jason) Benton get inside and finish and attack our zone well. We just had no aggressiveness. We made some poor decisions on offense – those 14 turnovers were just poor decisions by some young guys and some veteran guys.
“The second half, we just determined we were going to play man-to-man. That’s why we practice it so much. I thought our defense, man-to-man, was just as good as it could possibly be in the second half. I thought we did a tremendous job – Josh (Pace), Louie (McCroskey) and Billy (Edelin), playing Flores, making it tough on him.
“We rebounded the ball. I just can’t understand how we can get out-rebounded by three, four, five rebounds and then out-rebound somebody by 14 (in the second half). We just gotta do a better job on the boards.
“Our big guys got the ball in great position. If anything, Hakim’s (Warrick) over-passing to them and getting them the ball, and we’re just not finishing. We’re bringing it down. We got four or five easy lay-ups in there, and we’re just not converting them. Poor decisions in fast-break situations – just not playing good basketball.
“The one thing I’ll say, this was a game you could lose very easily. I thought Billy came out very aggressive in the second half and got to the basket. I just thought that we finally were a little bit more aggressive on the defensive end. We just did a much better job. To hold them to 21 points in the second half was, I thought, very good for us defensively.
“Billy, I thought, really came in and did a good job. They’re playing Gerry (McNamara) so tough that they’re playing four-against-four. We’re playing almost four-against-four. They got no help. We’ve got to get in the lane and take advantage of them playing Gerry so hard. Gerry’s got to find his opportunities when they’re there, but he’s going to have to earn everything he gets this year. The best way for us to help Gerry is for guys to take advantage of that. We have so many opportunities, offensively, to score, that we’re just not taking advantage of. That’s the only way we’re going to get better. And we’ve got to rebound better because that can get us some transition baskets that we have to get, so we can get out in transition and get a basket.
“I thought Louie did a great job. He gives us another guard who can shoot the ball and is a threat from the outside. He had two nice, wide-open looks in the second half, and I think he’ll make those down the road, but he’s still got two weeks at least to get into game condition.
“I thought, again, this was a game you can lose very easily and we were able to overcome it and get the job done against a tough, scrappy Manhattan team. To me, it’s obvious neither team is as good as they were last year. They lost a couple key guys, we lost a couple key guys. I just don’t think either team is playing anywhere near the level that we’d like to be playing.”
On the decision to switch to man-to-man defense in the second half:
“We gave up 42 points, so I figured there’s no way we can give up any more than that in the second half. We’re not a good man-to-man defensive team, but we work on it hard every day, and we’ve played man-to-man this year. I thought we played excellent defense. I really was very happy. That won the game. You’re usually going to win the game – come back and get in the game – or, if we didn’t play well defensively, we were going to get beat by 15 points. Our zone just wasn’t good tonight. They did a good job. Some teams attack it better than others. Sometimes we stand around, and it’s not a good defense when you stand around.”
On playing Edelin against Luis Flores:
“Billy did a good job. They were funny – they were kind of going with Flores, and he never really got in good position, I didn’t think. Two or three times they were trying to go inside. I just thought we did a good enough job with Flores that he never really got to where he could in position to do what he wanted to do. And he didn’t really have too many good looks. He didn’t really have that much that was good.”
On the development of the team:
“Both teams made a couple of bad offensive plays. Gerry, we’re three up, he’s going in for a lay-up and he throws it backwards to a guy. Just things we can’t do. I think that, from the beginning, I’ve said the same thing – it’s going to take us a long time. Some years we’re ready right away, and a lot of years, we’ve been playing pretty well at the end of the year. We’re not playing well. I think the good news is we can get better, but we’re just not where we need to be and we’ve got a long ways to get there. Last year, we had a senior leader, we had a freshman who wanted the ball. This year, we have nobody who wants the ball, except Gerry and he can’t get it because they’re going to play him that way. Hak’s got to take over. He can’t just be passive and hang around. He’s got to be more aggressive. He’s got to look to make plays. When he gets the ball, he just can’t turn and dump it down. He’s got to make a play there. He’s gotta go to the basket, he’s gotta get fouled. If he doesn’t go to the foul line eight or 10 times, he’s not playing aggressively enough. And when they double-team him, then he’s got to give it to our big guys, and our big gotta finish. I don’t know how many times that we had the ball positioned with Craig and Jeremy. In the first half, Jeremy walked and missed a dunk; Craig walked; Hakim stepped out of bounds two times – if you don’t know that the basketball court is not there… These are things that we usually don’t do. There’s obviously a whole lot of room for improvement on our basketball team. I hope that we’re going to be able to do that. Finals are over, we’ll practice hard. I hope in the next few weeks that we’re going to get better. We need to.”
On Edelin’s second-half performance:
“I think he just got in his area. He got the ball where he can score. We found him down low, we got a nice back door for him early. We were a little more patient on offense, we moved the ball a little better, we got him the ball where he could score. He had a couple transition baskets, and that’s where he’s got to get in that comfort area. It’s becoming clear to me that when both him and Josh are in the game, we’re small and we don’t have scorers or shooters in the game, and that’s going to manifest itself into big problems as we go along, so we’re going to have to look hard at that situation.”
On Terrence Roberts:
“Terrence just made too many bad turnovers. He was active and got himself in good position, but he just made some bad decisions, bad turnovers. He lets himself get muscled out by 6-5 guys. Our freshmen are freshmen. They have a lot to learn about the game and where they’ve got to go. They’re like most freshmen – they’re like Hakim was and Damone (Brown) and most freshmen. They’re like those guys. They’re not quite ready to play against physical, tough guys yet. They’re talented kids – they’re not ready. We’ll just see if we can get them ready in the next couple weeks. We got a lot of growing pains to go through with this team.”
On whether he considered going back to the zone defense in the second half:
“It was gamble. We were either going to win or we were going to lose the game playing man-to-man. We weren’t going back to it. In fact, when we had to play zone on the out-of-bounds, that’s when they scored. We don’t ever play man-to-man on the out-of-bounds, but we almost need to, because that’s when we got in trouble. That’s when they scored. Our zone, some nights, when we play it like this, it’s not effective. Some nights, it’s not going to be effective and we’ve got to be able to switch it up, and hopefully this is the thing that’ll come out of this game, that we can do this. I thought we did a much better job. I thought Craig played good position. He got his hands up and made people take bad shots. It’s frustrating because we do that, then we don’t get the ball, or we get it and we throw it away. We just did too many things like tonight and good basketball teams don’t do that. We’ve just got to get a whole lot better.”
