Jim Boeheim Quotes vs. UTEP
Jim Boeheim Quotes
Syracuse vs. UTEP
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
January 4, 2006
Opening Statement…
“I thought the difference in the second half was that we didn’t commit as many turnovers and didn’t allow easy baskets. We did a little better job on the boards and Gerry (McNamara) and Eric (Devendorf) got into the lane a little more and made some good plays. We had to play man-to-man quite a bit. I thought our man-to-man was good. We did a good job defensively, we let Ayala get too many looks and we have to rebound better. We’re as ready as we are going to be for the BIG EAST.”
On Arinze Onuaku’s performance…
“Seven rebounds, that’s pretty special - 14 minutes, seven rebounds. Our other center got one rebound in twenty-five minutes.”
On SU’s shooting…
“We’ve done this more than once. Whenever we don’t shoot really well from the perimeter we’re going to have to find other ways to win. We got pretty good looks from the outside and just didn’t make them.”
On rebounds…
“We’re just not doing a good job on the boards and until we do we’re going to have trouble every game we play.”
On Josh Wright playing a few minutes….
“Well he’s been practicing better. We’re hopeful that with another couple days of practice he’ll get moving again a little bit. It’s day-to-day but he’s feeling better. We’re trying to get him back in.”
On the first BIG EAST game coming up…
“Our schedule’s difficult. We know that and there’s nothing easy in the BIG EAST. Connecticut is a great team and they didn’t play well last night and were blown out. There’s as good as anybody. Marquette’s a good team. That’s the story of our league, we have twelve teams that could be NCAA tournament teams and every night you’re going to have a game that’s as tough as you’re ever going to want to see. You’re going to have to play your way through a lot of difficult times and ups and downs where things aren’t going to go well and you’re going to have to make due, make a way to get back in it. You’re going to have to battle every night. We’re ready. We’ve had to battle. That’s one thing we can say. We’re not going into the BIG EAST off six or seven easy winds that we didn’t have to battle. We’ve had to battle virtually every game except maybe a couple this year. Now we’ve got more of the same ahead of us. We’re just looking forward to the challenge. It’ll be difficult. We’ve obviously have to play a lot better but that’s all we can talk about right now.”
