Coach Boeheim Quotes
Syracuse vs. Rhode Island
December 8, 2007
Syracuse, N.Y. – Carrier Dome
Opening Statement:
“Right now, we’re just not good enough defensively and we don’t rebound enough defensively to win these kind of games. We have to keep working, we have two or three weeks left of non-conference games that we have to get better in. Virginia – we were fortunate. We were able to play zone and get away with it. Rhode Island – you can’t play zone against. They just have too many guys who can shoot the ball. It isn’t one, it’s two or three different guys. We did a good job in our man-to-man for the most part but we got beat on the boards, missed our free throws and just missed shots, and that’s very disappointing to get out-rebounded by eleven rebounds. That was really the story of the game and we missed three fast break opportunities that we didn’t convert when we had the lead, and those are the things that you cannot do. When you’re a young team, you make those mistakes and you can’t recover from them. Hopefully they’ll learn from this.”
On the final five seconds of the game:
“We just tried to push it and go as hard as we could. We couldn’t get to the basket because they were pressuring. Paul (Harris) had Eric (Devendorf) and he had a shot, it was close but you can’t get much in that situation.”
On Syracuse in foul trouble:
“When you play man-to-man the whole game, you’re more likely to get into foul trouble. We committed four fouls against Virginia in the second half because we were able to play zone. In man-to-man you’re going to get in foul trouble sometimes and we’ve got to be able to adjust better when we’re playing man-to-man.”
On freshman forward Rick Jackson:
“He was good, really good, really good. Scoop (Jardine) was good, he was good.”
On rebounding:
“We have to rebound better. We didn’t come to rebound tonight. Paul (Harris) is a good rebounder – he got two rebounds. Our guards aren’t helping us on the boards. I didn’t think Arinze (Onuaku) was active. We just didn’t do a good job on the boards. That was the game. We got enough stops actually defensively, we just didn’t rebound the ball at the defensive end. Disappointing not to be able to rebound the ball down there. Very disappointing.”
On shot selection in the final minute of play:
“They got in the lane, they tried to make something happen. We wanted to get into the lane area and I didn’t think they were that bad. Eric (Devendorf) can make that shot, but he never adjusted once he got out. He never got back into it after he sat out for a while. He just didn’t get back into the game well.”
On freshman forward Donte’ Greene:
“He has to avoid foul trouble. There is no question about that. Foul trouble was key, but if we play man-to-man for 40 minutes, we’re going to get in foul trouble unless we defend a lot better than we did tonight. There were a lot of fouls – just touch fouls that we can’t commit. We have to get better there."
