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Quotes: Duke 71, Georgia Tech 62
2/18/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening Statement
“That was a great basketball game. [Georgia Tech] is good. They're better than they were when they beat us down in Atlanta. It's hard for me to think that our league won't get nine teams in the tournament. We've played against really good teams. This conference is so good and all these teams better get rewarded. Kids in this conference are really playing their butts off, top to bottom. I think it's been the most competitive conference ? not just the race for first place but in games ? that I've ever seen. Our guys did a great job defensively, forcing turnovers and turning them into points. I think each team had a hard time scoring against the other team's half-court defense. They're really good defensively in a different way than us; they're athletic and long and it's tough to get by them. This was such a big game for us. We haven't been home for a while. The last time we were home was against North Carolina and everyone was crazy. Now the tents are down and it's a Sunday afternoon. I wanted our sixth man to be hungry. I thought the crowd responded well to it.”
On getting his 700th win
“I had no idea about 700 wins. We're 6-6 in the conference; I just want to get to 7-6. I was shocked at the end of the game when that happened. I don't read our press notes. I think I know my team well enough. I do watch the standings of the league. That was a nice surprise.”
On the team's improvement
“We are better. The league has made a lot of teams better because you really have to show up hard for every ballgame. I think the league will make a big splash in March. Our league has shown up very, very well. Georgia Tech is really good. There were two huge stretches for us [today] where our bench really came through. Against Florida State, we got in all that foul trouble and weren't able to sustain that. To me, that was big. At the beginning of the second half, we didn't come out with the defensive intensity. I think that sometimes when you're in a physical game like this there is too much time between rounds. You lose a little bit of your edge. We put in Lance [Thomas], G[erald Henderson], Marty [Pocius] and Dave [McClure] and they brought us back. Then Greg [Paulus'] three was huge. He was a tough kid today.”
On DeMarcus Nelson
“He's been a really good defender for us. That's why we put him on people. Looking back to last year, I would have loved to have had him all year so that J.J. [Redick] wasn't our defensive stopper. That's part of the game. He's made the most of it this year and has been a real good defender.”
On the last few games
“I thought we got better during those four games. We played winning basketball except for in the first eight minutes at Maryland. If you watch the Carolina game, we played winning basketball. We missed free throws and they're obviously really good. The other two games we had a shot at winning. During the second half at Maryland, Josh [McRoberts] asserted himself and used that as a springboard for Boston College. We were getting better and you have to keep letting the kids know that. Everyone else is talking about losing streaks and polls and superficial stuff that really is not the right thing for us to talk about.”
Sophomore Josh McRoberts:
“[Coach K closing in on 700]...It is something that he would never bring up to us. I kind of knew about it in the back of my mind, but I didn't think about it. It came to me at the end of the game how special it was.”
“I didn't do a great job today [breaking the press]. I was coming open as Greg (Paulus) was being trapped and I had a chance to handle the ball and help him out.”
Sophomore Dave McClure
“There's a grid-lock right now at the top [of the ACC] and we're trying to sit there and get our momentum going.”
“It's hard not to hear [the comments of “Duke's in trouble”] but we try to use it as a springboard and give us momentum. We know what we need to do and we're not going to be that Duke team. We're going to come back strong.”
Sophomore Greg Paulus
“We didn't execute as smoothly as we wanted to in the second half, but our defense didn't stop playing. As long as we're playing defense we could hold the lead that we built in the first half.”
“I had a couple of shots go down for me [in the second half] and I had some good looks. The shots were there and I was taking them.”
“Anytime you get a win it's a good feeling and we just need to build on what we just did.”
“We understand that we have a couple of road games coming up and we're not looking for three out of four, we're focusing on one, the next one.”
Georgia Tech Coach Paul Hewitt
Opening Statement
“Congratulations to Duke on their 20th win and to Coach Krzyzewski on his 700th. They played a good basketball game today. We battled back in the second half, obviously, but it was just too big of a hole in the first half to win on the road.”
On turning the ball over
“We were very timid and they were much more aggressive. If it was a fight, they would have stopped it. They were just battling and we didn't do anything to respond.”
On the defense of Duke's DeMarcus Nelson
“They're a good defensive team. I was more disappointed in the first half that we did nothing ... we didn't have any type of offense. In the second half we shot 45 percent. But credit them for being more aggressive than us. We knew it was going to be the type of game that the more aggressive team would win. It was a very important game for both teams. Pardon the clich? but they wanted it more in the first half. We played better in the second half, but we were down 15 at the half on the road. I thought we made a pretty strong comeback to get it back to have a chance to get it within six, but on that 3-on-1 break, we just made a very poor decision to throw the ally-oop pass instead of just shooting the ball. But if you're going to win games, you can't make those mistakes. And we made those mistakes and lost.”
On how the turnovers affected the momentum of the game
“I thought we played pretty good defense out there even though we turned it over 28 times. They weren't the type of turnovers that led to run-out baskets like they got in the first half. We had two very bad turnovers that were baseline drives that we threw back up to the top of the key, and those are very easy to pick off and turn into dunks and get some momentum. But I have to give them credit, they were much more aggressive. Like I said, if it was a fight, they would have stopped it in the first half. They absolutely battled us and we never responded.”
Players Mentioned
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