Coach Boeheim Quotes
Syracuse vs. No. 21/20 Marquette
March 8, 2008
March 8, 2008
Syracuse, N.Y. – Carrier Dome
Opening Statement:
“I thought today we were really smart at the end of the game. We were patient and we got the ball to [Arinze Onuaku] with the lead and he finished inside. I thought we really played smart down the stretch early. Jonny [Flynn] had a slow start, but once he got going he was tremendous today. Kristof [Ongenaet] had his hands on a lot of balls, he really was active today. Scoop [Jardine] comes in and makes a couple of really key plays in the game and really played well. It was a tremendous effort. Marquette is a really good basketball team and I just thought we played really well on defense. We’ve moved the best we’ve moved all year long and covering people and we just really did a good job on offense. This was our best all-around game in terms of offense and defense. It was a really good effort.”
On Kristof’s key plays:
“I was just watching, like everyone else to see what would happen. The guard made a half-hearted attempt at him and he got by him and he was going to get there then.”
On Kristof’s back-to-back plays:
“I just thought we played well the whole game. Those were good plays, but I just thought when it was still eight or ten, we got the ball to [Arinze Onuaku] and we took our time. We showed that we’re getting better knowing what to do and getting the ball into [Arinze Onuaku] in that situation. He was very solid; he waited, he was patient, and he finished down there. That was the thing that stood out in my mind the most about this game. We made really good plays the last five minutes and it’s taken us awhile to get to that point. You’re asking young guys to do that against three veteran guards as good as any guard group in the country. We kept our turnovers down to 14 and they’ve forced more turnovers than anybody. I thought we really played smart and took care of the basketball. We got the ball in the right places today, better than we have all year.”
On what was different in this game versus the Pittsburgh game:
“You just try to learn and get better. That’s all you can do.”
On what the win means for the rest of the season:
“I won’t talk about it for the rest of my coaching career. We’re just going to go out and play. Everyone else can talk about it.”
“I won’t talk about it for the rest of my coaching career. We’re just going to go out and play. Everyone else can talk about it.”
On what he liked about Kristof upon recruitment:
“We saw a tape and thought we needed one more player and we were back and forth on it. We had, at the time what we thought were enough players, but we were a little concerned on our front line with Arinze coming back from the injury and not knowing if Sean would be ready. We felt we might need another guy and we watched one tape of him and he looked just like he is now. He’s a very athletic guy and he really surprised me that he was that athletic for an unknown guy. I thought he would be something that helped us in terms of our depth. With everything’s that happened, he stepped in and made some tremendous plays. He passes the ball, its nice to have one guy out there that’s looking to get people the ball and pass the ball. We have scorers out there and he’s looking to get the ball to people. You need a guy like that. He was really good at Seton Hall the other night in the first half, then we went with a smaller line-up to try to get the ball up the court better. He’s played really well for us this year.”
On the players responding to Kristof:
“It’s always good, that type of thing is contagious. Arinze made the play of the game at Seton Hall diving after that ball, and we haven’t done that. Those are good plays. We played well at times this year. I think we’ve gotten better at the end. I think even in our losses, at Louisville we played good defense, we played good against Connecticut, we’ve played good basketball. By far, we’re playing the best overall that we’ve played all year now. It’ll be tough in New York, all the teams there are good. Anybody in this league is capable of beating just about anybody I think.”
On Donte’ getting looks from the outside:
“He didn’t get any looks from the outside. I think the good thing about playing them is they don’t let him get any outside looks, he’s stuck inside. We ran a lot of plays that are post-up plays and he was good down there. We didn’t run a lot of post-up plays early because he wasn’t ready to do much down there, so now he’s gotten better and he’s finishing better. He’s turning and shooting a jump shot over a 6-3 guy and that’s a good match-up for him. He got a couple good looks at the three-point line that he missed, but he was really good around the basket and made some good basket moves, which is important for us.”
On whether there was a time he sensed Kristof was getting it:
“He’s played hard from day one. He’s making a huge adjustment coming in and playing at this level. Very few junior college players can play at this level. If you look around the country, you will see very, very few that can come into the BIG EAST or the ACC and be a factor. He’s giving us a lot of good minutes.”
On what the officials were looking at on the review tape:
“Just to see what happened, it was nothing. It was a little over excessive, but those things happen. Jonny and other players went in to stand up for his teammate. That was it – there was nothing.”
On his pride after the Pittsburgh game:
“It’s always hard when you have a loss like that, it’s easy to get down when you’re young. Marquette is a very tough physical team; they’re not an easy team to play by any stretch of the imagination. They played ten guys in the first half, they were pressuring us, I’m sure their thought was, ‘this is Syracuse’s third game in the week, let’s get after them, let’s push them, let’s put pressure on them.’ And they did.”
“It’s always hard when you have a loss like that, it’s easy to get down when you’re young. Marquette is a very tough physical team; they’re not an easy team to play by any stretch of the imagination. They played ten guys in the first half, they were pressuring us, I’m sure their thought was, ‘this is Syracuse’s third game in the week, let’s get after them, let’s push them, let’s put pressure on them.’ And they did.”
On his favorite Billy Owens moment:
“Billy is one of the greatest players I’ve seen. He was a tremendous basketball player and a really good kid. It was great to coach him. He can do as many things as anybody we’ve ever had with a basketball. His junior year he average 20-something and 10. If he had come back, he would’ve averaged 30 and 10. He was a tremendous basketball player and a great guy to coach. He balanced out Derrick a little bit.”
On his thoughts approaching the BIG EAST tournament:
“Just going to go play. That’s all you can do now.”
On Rookie of the Year:
“I don’t know what will happen. They have both been tremendous. I couldn’t pick between one of them. I think they both probably should be, but I don’t know if it’ll work out that way. It’s hard to win good nine games in this league with all freshmen and sophomores. I think these guys have done a tremendous job. I think they have been really terrific to win games on the road in this league. To go down and win at Virginia and win the games they have won; I think they’ve really been terrific. You always look back on a game or two that could’ve gone the other way, but we could have struggled to get to 15 or 16 wins this year with this many young guys, and losing Eric and Andy like we did. We are the worst three-point shooting team in the league and we’ve got nothing but young guys. They have battled in there and been through a lot of adversity and tough loses. We’ve only been out of one game all year, that’s very unusual. As poorly as we’ve played sometimes, we’ve hung in there and had a chance at every game except one game the whole year. That’s a lot of determination for some of the young guys. We played well for these games. We’ve been playing pretty good basketball for awhile now.”
