Oregon-VCU Quotes
Oregon Head Coach Dana Altman:
On tonight’s performance:
“We got off to a bad start. We might have to change our pregame routine because we’re not getting off to very good starts. After that, I thought the guys fought pretty hard. We just made a lot of fundamental mistakes. A lot of our turnovers were guys leaving their feet and trying to make plays.”
“Defensively at times, we were really sharp. At other times, we just let down for a second. They took advantage of that when we did. They scored 26 points off of our turnovers and we were only able to get 10 off of theirs. So, we had opportunities a couple of times and narrowed it down, but they had guys step up and make plays.”
“We made a couple of runs. We just didn’t finish them out. It’s early and if you can’t play two games back-to-back, then you’re not in very good shape. So, I don’t think fatigue was a factor.”
On coaching a young team:
“Our margin for error is not very big. So, the guys out there really have to be fundamentally sound. When we’re not fundamentally sound, it shows up real quick offensively or defensively. We just have to get a lot more sound and I have to do a better job with that. Our guys have to play a certain way and our communication has to continue to get better. “
Ahmaad Rorie
On playing VCU at Barclays Center:
“It was real exciting to play in front of all the people in an NBA arena. It’s what you dream of. “
On the team and his role:
“I’m real excited for the team. I’m just going to try to step up as a leader even though I’m a freshman.”
VCU Head Coach Shaka Smart
On the game:
“Our guys did a great job following the plan that we put in place. Obviously it was a quick turnaround coming off of last night’s game. We talked about Oregon this morning, and what we would need to do against them. At the end of the day, these two guys (Burgess and Johnson) along with the other guys that played big minutes, made a lot of “toughness” plays and that made the difference for us.”
On having five starters in double figures:
“It depends on the game, but we certainly have a lot of guys who are capable of getting double figures, not just our starting lineup. It’s good to have balance because we can’t just focus on one guy. I thought last night Villanova put a lot of emphasis on “Mel” (Melvin Johnson) and on “Tre” (Treveon Graham), and that’s what a lot of teams are going to do because they are probably our two best scorers. But I thought that Jordan, Mo, and Briante- those guys stepped up and JeQuan played much better. But as Melvin said, it starts on defense. We need to continue to get better on defense. I thought overall, we played with great effort, but tonight, we are still not at the level that we want. I think that our guys, on the quick turnaround, did a really good job locking in on what we needed to do.”
Melvin Johnson
On assessing the team’s play so far this season:
“Honestly I think we’ve been playing really well, especially on offense. But we can definitely get better on defense. I’m sort of glad we got slapped in the mouth yesterday, because you could feel the tension in the locker room. Everyone was humbled by it. We needed to get better as a unit, and I think today we showed a good example of that. We needed to start putting emphasis on every single stop, and we did that today.”
On the difference between the game yesterday and today:
“I will keep reiterating defense. We got 44 out of 64 stops today, I believe, I’m not sure. But we were really locked in on defense. We had some mistakes but nobody’s perfect, and we can win with some mistakes, but yesterday we made way too many mistakes. We let their guys get going and Villanova had it finished early.”
