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Hillsman Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Quentin Hillsman
Syracuse vs. Wagner
December 2, 2009
Carrier Dome – Syracuse, N.Y.
Opening Statement:
“I’m very happy with the win and the effort. I thought we did a very good job in the second half guarding the shooters. First half, they got a few looks and we didn’t get to the shooters fast enough. At half time, we made a little adjustment to make sure we played our forwards a little more up the floor and not have to worry about the second and third passes, but just the first pass. I think that was the answer to shutting down the three-point shooting.
“ Offensively, I thought we were very efficient. We played a very good game. We shot 47 percent from the field. I thought (freshman center) Kayla Alexander was phenomenal. We threw the ball down there and she just made plays. She did a very good job of stealing and to have 23 points in 19 minutes is pretty impressive.
“ Other than that, I’m just very happy with the win and very happy to be undefeated at this point. We didn’t take any games for granted and it was very good to get our starters off the floor. Our starters averaged 17 minutes and I thought that was very important for us. It was a good chance to get (freshman guard) Elashier (Hall), (freshman guard) Carmen (Tyson-Thomas), and Kayla (Alexander) a chance to get on the floor and play. We got some things accomplished today that I know we needed to in order to win basketball games. I’m very happy with the win.”
On the first half scoring run:
“It was right around that 12 minute media timeout. We just said we have to get up the floor because they did a very good job of overloading. They did a very good job preparing for us and early they got into the dead spots where a zone has problems, but we worked on that everyday in practice. When they got those shots early, we had to say ‘Wait a minute, we just talked about this.’ Those are the things that we knew would hurt our zone so we worked on that, touched on it again, and took care of the problem.”
On what the team did to adjust early in this game:
“We just played up the floor. The ball goes to the wings and we played our forwards up the floor. We just didn’t want to play two passes. We really got up the floor and didn’t let them make one pass and a shot or two passes and a shot. We made them make the fourth or fifth pass and start to get into a few shot clock violations.”
On the performance by the freshmen:
“They did really well. It was great to get them some real game experience under the whistle and for them to make some plays, make some mistakes, and correct some mistakes. It was very good to see those three freshmen on the floor because you know you have a bright future.”
On anything he was unhappy with tonight:
“I think just starting out not carrying out what we had talked about in practice about playing up the floor. We gave them those threes and then we had to go back and adjust and talk about. We didn’t get it done early and that’s why I subbed the whole five out. We just talked about offensive rebounds and not giving them open looks and that’s the first two things they got. We put the second group in, who had been winning every scrimmage in practice this week anyway, and they pretty much took the lead for us.”
On the offensive rebounds:
“We just want to stay after it. We just talked about just going every time. If you go every time, five or six of them are just going to fall in your lap. We just talked about getting to the glass every time and trying to get to the free throw line. Tonight, we definitely did those two things.”
