Boeheim Quotes Georgetown
Syracuse vs. Georgetown
February 9, 2011
Syracuse, N.Y. – Carrier Dome
Head Coach Jim Boeheim Postgame Quotes
Opening Statement:
“This was the first game Ricky (Jackson) has gotten into foul trouble. When he’s not in there, it hurts the whole post game. We’ve really come to depend on him and I thought that was a big difference in the game. We missed some opportunities, particularly at the start of the second half.
We got the ball and got some layup opportunities and got around the basket. Our defense was really doing a good job and we didn’t do anything on offense to start the second half. We still kept control of it, but it was very, very tenuous at that point, and then we made just a couple mistakes. We didn’t make a lot of mistakes, but we made probably two bad mistakes that led to the layups at the other end. I think we’ve got to make some shots. We’ve missed the games we’ve struggled in. We shot less than 40 percent and less than 30 percent from the three.
They’re going to make shots. I thought we did a good job defensively. It was probably as good of a defensive game that we’ve played this year. The first half, I thought the difference in the game was that we rebounded the ball, but we didn’t do a good job rebounding in the second half. Part of that was Ricky’s out for a long time and obviously that hurts us on the boards. Again, I thought we made a couple bad mistakes and we missed some shots that you’ve got to make, particularly when we had the lead. We had a couple opportunities and Kris (Joseph) charged one and Scoop (Jardine) lost one and you can’t do that.
Georgetown’s obviously a very good team. They’ve played well on the road this year and we just didn’t make the plays that we had to make there at the end.”
Talk about the job C.J. Fair did tonight.
“I thought he was good off the bench. He’s played steady, really steady for us all year.”
Rick (Jackson) was only 1-of-6 from the field. Did the offensive foul calls kind of take him out of his game?
“Yeah, it could have, I don’t know. He’s got to be careful. Close calls. He’s just got to go the other way. He’s got to see that.”
Your thoughts on the performance by Baye Moussa Keita?
“I thought Baye was active. He played the way he plays. He’s very active. He’s had a really solid year. I think it’s tough for him to play a lot of minutes. I think he gets tired. When he plays a lot of minutes, he’s going to get in foul trouble, but I thought he was very good and very active tonight.”
Even with Rick (Jackson) out, you still had the lead when he came back in. What was the problem when he came back?
“I just think he never got into it. He never really got back into the game. We need him, obviously, offensively. He’s been so steady for us all year and we need him there offensively. Again, this was a great defensive effort against a really good offensive team. We’ve just got to score points. We can’t win (without points).
The main difference between this year and last year was I think we’re at least as good defensively, but we just can’t score enough. We’ve got to be able to score more points. We had control of the game, we had a lot of stops and we kept coming down, but we just could not get the ball in the basket offensively. Eventually, that’s going to catch up with you. You’ve got to score some points.”
You alluded to some defensive mistakes there. Can you comment on that?
“Well, we didn’t get back once and they got one back-door, but we did a good job the whole game defensively. Offensively -- we’ve got to play better offense. If we’re going to shoot under 40 percent from the field and 25 percent from the three, we’re going to struggle. We have to make more shots.”
Talk about the three-point shooting tonight. Did you think they were good shots?
“They were all good shots. I didn’t see a bad three.”
Can you get better offensively this late in the season?
"We just came off a very, very good offensive game. We had a bad one tonight. That doesn’t mean we’re going to have a bad one tomorrow. We had a bad offensive game today. We missed some shots, some threes, some shots around the basket that we have to make in this kind of game. We didn’t make them tonight.”
