Coach Boeheim Quotes
2004 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships
Pepsi Center
Denver, Colo.
Thursday March 18, 2004
Opening Statement
“Whenever we think we have a good zone defense someone always seems to step up and prove us wrong.”
“You have to give BYU a lot of credit today they did a great job on the defensive and offensive ends.”
“You have to give my guys (Syracuse) a lot of credit. Defensively we did a great job; we went to a man-to-man and we have played man-to-man in ten games.”
“BYU is a tremendous basketball team, they’re well coached, and we had our hands full today.”
On the toughness of BYU
“I thought they played really well against us. We knew they shot around 34 percent from the three point line. You don’t see a lot of zone with them, but we were prepared for the threes. We toyed with the idea of switching to a man-to-man defense, but we have not played that in the past ten games at least. We could not stay in the zone today at all, and after our seven point lead we normally would have switched back. In hind sight we should have switched but we didn’t.”
On Rafael Araujo
“Araujo is a good player. He shoots well, he’s patient, and he’s a good passer. I think he is a very good offensive player.”
On Gerry McNamara’s performance
“Gerry was as good as I have ever seen in college basketball. It’s ironic, because usually when we are playing against the defensive player of the year (Mike Hall), one of our guys usually ends up getting around 35 points. Gerry was in another world today, and I don’t think we will see the likes of that in forever. I think half the time he was shooting behind the NBA mark, but he (McNamara) knows he’s a gamer. He knew we were about to go down with a big bang, and knew that it was either him or home. I can’t think of anyone who plays like that.”
On Syracuse’s strategy in the second half
“We were going to try to get Hakim (Warrick) more involved in the offense. We thought this could take some pressure off of Gerry (McNamara). I was anticipating that Gerry would struggle in the second half.”
