University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Post-Game Quotesheet
3/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 4, 2014
Recap |
Box Score |
Notes |
Photo Gallery 
POST GAME QUOTESHEET
NC State at Pitt, Petersen Events Center, March 3, 2014
NC State 74, Pitt 67
Quoting Pitt coach Jamie Dixon
Opening Statement:
“With the rebounding and [T.J.] Warren, congratulations to them. We have been stressing the rebound all year long and when we come up short, that is the thing that has stood out to me. Sometimes our guys don’t recognize it and other people don’t recognize it and obviously tonight we set records with our least amount of numbers. I don’t know how we can get two offensive rebounds, and I don’t know how we can come up with 23. I take full responsibility for that and full responsibility for a guy getting 41 points on us. We tried different defenses and we tried to double him at the end. The foul trouble at the end left us with very little guys to go. Warren played well and made shots. Zone wasn’t effective in stopping him either as he got inside on it. They were able to get second shots at an unbelievable rate. We have to outrebound people. I have been saying that all year long. We didn’t get it done so we ended up with the result that we have and this is obviously hard to take. To be 6-2 on the road and 4-5 at home is a rare occurrence that a team would do that. That is where we’re at and so we have to go play well against Clemson on Saturday. That is what we are going to do and what we are looking forward to.”
On rebounding in zone:
“Are we going to make excuses for ourselves? We didn’t get it done We can point to different things, the fouls or the the zone. We weren’t getting it done in the start of the game and we were in man-to-man. We were down at that point too. [Talib] Zanna had nine and 14 from the rest of the guys and that is hard to understand. We are not going to make excuses for what the reason is. We didn’t get it done. [Josh] Newkirk played really well speaking into a positive. He has been playing better and better and now he is playing more minutes. The foul trouble got him to the 34 minutes he played. It felt like we have our hands tied and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many perimeter guys getting fouls that early and quickly. Obviously we are short in numbers on the perimeter as well so it really did put some challenges upon us defensively. That is my responsibility for not rebounding and not getting it done defensively.”
On being in control first fifteen minutes of the game:
“We were relying on our offense and we were making shots but at the same time we weren’t outrebounding them. They were making shots at a pretty good rate. We were missing some free throws. Eventually that catches up to you. We shot it well from the three early in the game and that got us to a lead. I thought we did move the ball well and made some good decisions offensively, passing the ball and getting it inside and out. I thought we attacked the zone well. There were some good things there offensively to get us a 13 point lead. We put ourselves in a problem with every guy in foul trouble on the perimeter. That left us with having guys in with fouls that weren’t playing the defense that needed to be played or rebounding with the aggressiveness they needed to have.”
On making defensive switches:
“At the end, I would say that the foul troubles limited us. We didn’t have many options to put on Warren at that time. When we were in man, we double teamed him. We haven’t used that often but we did practice in both games prior to playing them. He got transition baskets, offensive rebound baskets and he got to the foul line. Some of the threes he hit at the end of the clock in the zone were a couple of tough shots. The guy is very good and we didn’t do the job. With that, it comes a guy getting 41 points who had 36 last week. We couldn’t have talked about it more with him being guy but yet early on it seemed like we didn’t know he was at 24 points. I was surprised that we could not understand that this was the guy going to score. He had all their points to start the game and I have to do a better job.”
On NC State’s positioning for offensive rebounds:
“With their 13 offensive rebounds, I don’t think they had great positioning, we just didn’t come up with anything. We have been outrebounded in half of our games. That is what I say constantly and at the end of the day it is because we get outrebounded. This was the case again. From the first loss of the year, and we have eight of them, we focus so much on the losses but we don’t seem to get the message across that is the rebounding is what comes short. We got beat on the boards against Cincinnati and that was three months ago and the message is not getting across. NC State outrebounded us at their place too which is something we had talked about.”
On concern of not getting rebounding message across:
“Everything is a concern. It is a loss. We come in expecting to win and plan to win every game. That is what our standard is and we didn’t win. To lose this way is hard. I don’t know how you can get two offensive rebounds in a game. I don’t know if that is possible to have 23 rebounds. We have to go to work and figure it out going forward.”
On team being capable of rebounding:
“Our numbers are pretty good. I think our defense led to the rebounding numbers. We can sit here and say that [T.J.] Warren had an unbelievable game and he made some shots that were guarded and fouled at times. The threes that he hit at the end of the clock were guarded about as well as you can. Defensively, if you guard and they miss, the defensive team is going to get more of those rebounds. If they make more shots, they add up and that is the case that happened here.”
On concern about T.J. Warren or his teammates:
“For this game, we were more concerned about him. I felt he was the guy that could get them going. Often times in other games you may look at not letting the other guys get their average. Warren is going to get shots up and you can’t let him get going and that is what he did. He hit some tough ones and hit some ones with guys on them and in places that generally you would like him to take. The biggest thing was the fouls away from the ball to start the game really took away from the aggressiveness that we could have had. That is part of being a great offensive player, too.”
On Josh Newkirk’s improvement:
“He is just playing better and better. He is playing better defense and that is how we have to keep playing him more. With the foul troubles, he played more. He is shooting it well. His percentages are better now and he is making good decisions. We like having him in there with [James] Robinson. It gives us some good penetration and shooting. He played really well tonight. Josh made it pretty clear when he got here how well he shot the ball and it was evident early. We were very fortunate with that. He works at it and is a great kid. He is going to be a really good player and he played terrific tonight. There is no question that we have a very good freshman. Our freshmen played well but not well enough. We have a lot of freshmen out there and they have to understand. Hopefully this is a learning lesson for us.”
Quoting Pitt forward Lamar Patterson
On how NC State came back from being down:
“They got a little run at the end of the first half. Then second half they came out hitting shots. We didn’t get the job done rebounding and defensively.”
On troubles winning at home this year:
“Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that. A couple games went the other way. Today, we lost this one.”
On T.J. Warren getting so many good looks:
“He [T.J. Warren] is a great player. He is a scorer and he knows his strengths. His strengths are moving the ball and getting layups. He definitely can finish around the rim and he proved that today.”
On what went wrong in the second half:
“It came down to rebounding and they outrebounded us by 12. It is hard winning games when you get out rebounded like that. Between that and [T.J.] Warren going off, is a recipe for a loss.”
Quoting Pitt guard Josh Newkirk
On his big game:
“I just wanted to provide a spark from the bench and bring energy. Unfortunately we didn’t come out with the win. We’ve got to get back to the gym, work on it and fix things.”
On hitting three’s tonight:
“After I made the first one, it felt good so I just continued to shoot it. They were just going in.”
Quoting Pitt forward Talib Zanna
On if the team feels unlucky this season:
“We can’t say we feel unlucky. We just didn’t get it done. He [T.J. Warren] was hot from the beginning and he was hot the whole game. It became too late to cool him off.”
On the seniors finishing the season with losses:
“It’s really tough. We came out and were not prepared. We should have come out and been really aggressive from the beginning. We were flat-footed. They came out in the second half and were hitting shots. T.J. [Warren] was getting open. The rebounds too, we didn’t box out. We went zone and they got rebounds that affected our whole defensive principle.”
Quoting NC State coach Mark Gottfried:
Opening Statement:
“That was a great team win for us. Obviously T.J. (Warren) was spectacular and he made big shots for our team and kept making them late in the game and we finished the game out which at times is something we haven’t done. Even the other guys who weren’t scoring much, whether it was setting a screen, getting a defensive or offensive rebound, guys did some things really well. It was a great team win and like I said T.J. was special tonight, no question.”
On how important it was to outrebound Pitt by 12:
“I thought there were two things going into the game that we talked to our team about. One was not turning the ball over, we played Pitt earlier in the year and they just took the ball from us six or eight times and took them down for lay-ups, the old pick-six. We had to play without turning the ball over and the other thing was rebounding the ball. (Talib) Zanna went for 17 points and 14 rebounds down at Raleigh and tonight they only got two offensive rebounds, which is almost unheard of with Jaime’s (Dixon) teams. They’re really good on the glass and I thought our ability to rebound the ball and not turn it over were big for our team.”
On what specifically helped them gain an advantage on the glass:
“I thought our guys just had a mindset to go get it. At the half they didn’t have an offensive rebound. Our guys did a nice job. We adjusted our defense and protected the paint better than we did a couple of nights ago and that helped us get in better position to rebound the ball.”
On T.J. Warren’s performance:
“It’s interesting, T.J. Warren gets 41 points tonight but it’s an unselfish 41. He shot 16-for-22 from the field, he’s not taking bad shots, our guys did a great job executing our offense and hunting for him because he had the hot hand. Lennard Freeman set a couple of great screens for him coming off of the foul line area. He was special especially against a team that prides themselves on defending the way Pitt does.”
On if he questioned whether his team would bounce back from Saturday’s loss:
“Not really. What has happened to us is we’ve left one game affect the next game a couple of times. We played at Syracuse, put ourselves in a position to win, and were emotionally drained and allowed it to affect us against Clemson. We did the same thing with North Carolina and allowed it to affect us. We bounce back pretty well but those games have hurt our team. We’ve had two really good days of practice, our guys have had great spirit and they came out tonight and played with great purpose. We’ve had some times this year where we haven’t finished a game real well and we finished tonight and I thought that was important.”
On their defensive strategy heading into the game:
“We tried to front (Lamar) Patterson, completely deny him the ball and didn’t want him to be comfortable. Desmond Lee and Cat Barber did a great job of disrupting that. We did a much better job of helping each other; they didn’t have many opportunities to drive which is what we wanted. They made 10 three-pointers tonight and they’re a team that usually doesn’t make many three-pointers.”
On if Josh Newkirk’s performance surprised them:
“It surprised us, definitely caught us off guard a little bit. 5-for-5 from the three, he played terrific tonight and you have to give him credit, that was a bit of a surprise.”
Quoting NC State forward T.J. Warren:
On what allowed him to be so effective tonight:
“Well, I came out pretty aggressive tonight and my teammates did a good job of finding me in the open floor. As a team, we executed our offense effectively. So, all credit for this performance goes to my teammates.”
On whether the defense Pitt played affected him:
“The important thing for me is to pick and choose my spots against the defense. Like I said, our guards did a pretty good job of swinging the ball around the top of the key. Also, Lennard (Freeman) set some great screens for me. Again, this was an all-around effort by our team.”
On whether he knew it was his night at any point:
“Yeah, that three at the end of the shot-clock felt good, so I kind of knew it was going to be one of those nights. My teammates found me in some good spots and I was able to knock down those shots.”
