Syracuse vs. Le Moyne
Coach Jim Boeheim Postgame Quotes
Syracuse vs. LeMoyne
November 7, 2007
Carrier Dome – Syracuse, N.Y.
“I thought the second half we really did a good job of moving the ball and getting good quality shots. I thought we were active on defense and did some good things. These first two exhibition games its just good for these young players to get in this building and try to get used to a little bit of the game situation, so hopefully this will help us. “
On the freshman center Rick Jackson:
“Rick (Jackson) is a good rebounder, he is a good inside player. He is a lot stronger than LeMoyne’s guys so he should have a good game against them particularly inside and he did that. He has a good touch around the basket and he is a good positional player. He knows where the ball is and he does a good job of rebounding. That’s a strength of his – he is a good inside player.”
On freshman forward Donte Greene:
“He can score, he is a good shooter and he is getting a lot of good open looks and that’s all good.”
On Greene’s size:
“We’ll face teams that will be physical with him and bang him around and he’ll have to get adjusted to that once we get into those games.”
On the defense in the second half:
“Well we played a lot of zone and we’re a little bit better right now in that defense I’d say.”
On junior center Arinze Onuaku in foul trouble:
“Yeah he has to watch it because he got a couple silly ones early. He has to learn, he hasn’t played and these are all things that take time for inside players to learn. It takes time, it takes game time. He needs more game time.”
On what he liked offensively:
“I thought we moved the ball well, we had 27 assists, I thought we moved the ball, looked for each other. Eric (Devendorf) did a nice job looking for people, I thought we did a good job passing the ball as the game wore on. We started out and we didn’t get in the offense very good early but I thought we did a better job as the game went on.”
On the announcement of 16 teams in the BIG EAST Tournament:
“I think it is the right thing to do for a number of reasons. Primarily the players, if they come into a situation and don’t have a good year or two they could not go to New York for two years. I think if you’re going to have a league tournament, I think it has always been the coaches feeling that everybody should go to New York. I don’t think it is going to hurt anybody, I think it is just better for players and fans. I can’t imagine, as I understand it, you buy tickets and if your team doesn’t go I guess you turn the tickets back in, it just doesn’t make sense.”
On looking ahead in the schedule:
“We know that the opening games are tough and we have to be ready.”
On whether freshman Sean Williams will redshirt:
“Time will tell.”
On whether senior guard Josh Wright will play Monday:
“I don’t know, we’ll see how he feels. He hasn’t practiced, he hasn’t been able to go full strength. He has another day off tomorrow. If he can go Friday, then I’d imagine he would be ready by Monday.”
On fast breaks:
“We want to run if we can. It’s hard to run against good teams but we’d like to run, push the ball as much as we can.”
On what the team needs to work on:
“Everything. We have to work on our offensive execution. We really have to keep working on everything. It’s so early we’re still right in the beginning stages of a basketball team. We just have a lot of work to do, I thought there were some very encouraging things on offense tonight and some things that were not so encouraging on defense. That’s just going to be the way it will be for a while until we get well into the season.”
On defense in the paint:
“I don’t think anyone played defense in the paint in the first half. I don’t think we did a good job with that at all.”
On what was wrong defensively:
“We just didn’t do a good job picking up on the back screens, helping or defending it. When they got it down low, we didn’t defend very well down there.”
