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Quotes: Duke 73, N.C. State 56
1/20/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening statement:
“Our offense, as bad as it was in the first half, it was that good in the second half. I thought they played us really hard. I was worried about today's game for a couple reasons ? one, I think State's good. They're a couple points, a few possessions away from being 13-2 coming in here. I think they have two of the best players in the league in [Brandon] Costner and [Ben] McCauley. After that big win against Georgetown, there's a little bit of a let-down emotionally, crowd-wise and team-wise. Then we started out the game like gangbusters. I thought we came ready to play, but we didn't convert. ... For us, I thought we were doing enough to be 15-1, 16-1, and all of a sudden it's 8-1 and 16-12, and they got their rhythm and I thought it knocked us back. They kind of took control of the tempo of the game and then Cosnter hit those two big threes. He was very patient. He didn't get many openings, but every time he did he knocked them down. Then there's game pressure ? I thought the second half, the start of the second half, we had great energy. Gerald [Henderson], especially in the first eight minutes, put us on his back. Nolan [Smith] ? I thought this was his best game, and he's put three really terrific games together. His two threes there tied it and then put us ahead. And Kyle [Singler] playing with four fouls for eight minutes. It was a one-possession game, and all of sudden we got two steals and turned them into buckets. [David] McClure was huge for us, especially on that top ball screen. It was a hard-fought win for us, but with the score you'd think we kind of walked through this. They didn't score much in the last eight minutes and we did, and we won. I think we played well to beat them ? they're good.”
On shot quality between the halves:
“They blocked three of our shots right by the rim and we got nothing. You can't let that happen ? you have to get points. I thought we had good shots; if you get it that close, that's quality. I thought we were a little bit anxious, I thought all night we over-ran some balls that turned into buckets for them. It wasn't that we weren't playing hard; sometimes you're just a little bit overanxious but then they had the presence of mind to turn them into buckets. It's a good win for us, a really good win.”
On David McClure's play:
“Dave is an outstanding defender, and he's an easy kid to play with. Today I think he hit two shots, and he's a good player, but he's outstanding defensively. We went small because Costner was playing like a perimeter player in the second half, which is fine ? he does that. It gave us the opportunity to switch that thing up top, that ball screen, and if he did roll we bumped with the other big and kept our guard up. In the first half we didn't bump as well, and we got screwed up on it a little bit. Dave was very efficient ? no mistakes. He's so dependable and been a really good player for us ? one of our key players.”
On N.C. State's position within the league:
“From the teams that we've played, we've played four ACC games, State can play with any of the teams. Those two guys [Costner and McCauley] are really good. They're not good, they're really good. And I think they're getting more solid point guard play. [Courtney] Fells hasn't played like he can play yet. I don't know if he's still hampered by his ankle injury, but he's an elite player when he's right. Then you have three guys, and they do have good complementary guys in there, guys who can make shots. Not everybody in the league will play them as hard defensively ? they might zone or play off. I think they're good. They've played us really well the last three ballgames. [N.C. State head coach] Sidney [Lowe] has a way of trying to figure out what weakness you have in your defense and goes at it. He's a good coach.”
On Gerald Henderson's play since mid-December:
“Gerald was really good before he hurt his wrist ? averaging 15-16 per game. Last year, one of our great wins was in Maui against Illinois when he just took over. He can take over, he can elevate. But when he does that, he can also make a pass to an open teammate. He can produce points ? not just his, but for others. He's been playing really well. He's played well all year, but since the middle of December he's played really well.”
Duke Sophomore Nolan Smith
“We improved and we got better. The second half was the way we should play all the time for 40 minutes. N.C. State played a great first half. They were aggressive and they made shots. We missed a lot of shots in the first half, but you have to be able to battle through stuff. We showed in the second half that we are a very battle-tested team. With our backs against the wall, we were down at the half and we responded.”
On Duke's struggles in the first half:
“Shots weren't falling. Defensively, we still had them at 26 [points] at halftime, and that's right around where we always have teams. I just say it was mainly shots and there were a couple of loose balls that we could've gotten that we normally get. We definitely had to keep grinding, keep fighting and keep shooting. We weren't going to win if we backed down and played really timid, so we kept attacking them.”
On his two big threes after a tough night shooting before that:
“Coach K keeps telling me to keep shooting and be aggressive. I got two more good looks and I took them ? with confidence ? and I took them like I was J.J. [Redick].”
Duke Junior Gerald Henderson
“I knew I was going to have to be way more aggressive than I was. Kyle [Singler] wasn't playing like he usually does. Jon [Scheyer] wasn't hitting like he usually does. So I guess I kind of took it on my shoulders. My teammates were going to me, Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] was going to me, and I knew that if he was going to call some plays for me I had to make something happen.”
On Duke's shooting woes in the first half:
“It was really weird, coming off a game where we shot it way better than we did today. Starting that first half, it was frustrating because we were getting good shots. They just weren't falling.”
On the second half complete turnaround:
“I can't explain that, other than we have really good players. When we're sharp and running our stuff and executing it, we're going to make shots and get open shots. We have good enough players to knock them down.”
On his hot shooting hand in the second half:
“I don't know where it started. My jumper really wasn't falling in the first half. My biggest thing was to be aggressive and get to the rim. We felt like we could drive them and I did that multiple times in the second half.”
“We knew that the best thing we do right now is our defense. So if we can get our defense going, it gets our offense going, it gets the crowd going and we get into a better rhythm.”
“We knew that State was a good team. They played us last year the best for two games of any teams we played in the conference other than maybe Carolina and some of the teams we lost to. It's not that we were worried. Obviously there's a lot of game pressure going into that second half, but you just have to man up. Obviously you want to win by 30 or 40 but when you're in situations like that you want to take over and just lock down.”
Duke Sophomore Kyle Singler
“[Gerald Henderson]'s play kind of gave the team a big lift. When someone plays with that must assertiveness and confidence, it kind of feeds down through the whole team and guys get shots from that. His play was big tonight.”
“It was kind of like there was a Purdue-Michigan series, and this was our Georgetown-N.C. State series. Coming off an emotional, big win like that, you sometimes can let your guard down a little bit. I think we came ready to play tonight but we can play better basketball than we did. It was good to see that we played better in the second half than we did in the first.”
On Coach K's message to the team at halftime:
“He just knew that we could play better basketball and he just wants the best for us. He just basically stressed that we were going to have to play better to win. It was kind of cut and dried like that. We talked as a team and we felt like we were kind of letting down each other and we held it on each other to play better. I think guys stepped up.”
N.C. State Head Coach Sidney Lowe
Opening Statement:
“I thought we played about 33 minutes of quality basketball. After coming out and not being able to make a shot I thought the guys did a great job of hanging in there and finishing off that first half really strong. It was a great defensive effort. The second half, they just kept coming at us and coming at us. We turned the ball over too many times to beat a club like Duke.”
On the final seven minutes of the game:
“I think, one, we didn't make shots. We turned it over a couple of times, three in a row I think, and then they got going. [Gerald] Henderson got going for them. They pressured the ball and got a couple steals. I think we started to dribble the ball a little too much instead of moving the ball around and finding the mismatches and things. We didn't do it as well as in the first half or those first 33 minutes.”
On getting back into the offensive groove after score was 49-46:
“It's a game of runs and we knew that they were going to make a strong push and make a run at us in the second half. You try to get at least two runs in a half and we weren't able to do that. I thought our guys, Tracy Smith, came in and did a nice job for us. I think it was a three-point ball game and maybe Courtney [Fells] hit a shot. We actually came back with some of our starters trying to finish it off and we weren't able to do it. We had to keep fresh bodies in there, and that's where we actually turned it over a couple of times. I think they had the momentum going and applied the pressure and we weren't as poised as we needed to be in a situation like this. I thought our guys really played hard and really put ourselves in the position there for a while. But Duke made the last run and that was the difference.”
On the team's defensive effort:
“We weren't as aggressive. Courtney [Fells] got his third foul. That really changed things for us, because he was guarding [Gerald] Henderson and that's when [Gerald] Henderson really started to go. He couldn't be as aggressive as we wanted him to be for fear of him getting that fourth one. Then they ran a couple of sets and we didn't cover each other like we did in the first half. Then they knocked down some shots. Certainly it was a combination of our defense wasn't as aggressive and as solid as it was before. They shot about 76 percent in the second half. That really was the difference in the ball game with the turnovers we had as well.”
On the problems Gerald Henderson created for them:
“He's a unique player in that he's strong enough to put it on the floor and get by you and use his body, he can jump over you and he's really knocking that jump shot down which makes him even tougher. You get up on him, he's got that first step. He's playing three or four. He can cause you a lot of problems as you saw tonight. He did exactly what a player of his caliber is supposed to do. He took over the game for a period there and that's the one guy I talked about in pre-game to the media. He can change the game and he did it again tonight. That's what he expects of himself and I'm sure that's what his team expected. He did exactly what a leader is supposed to do. He took over.”
On team playing equally hard as its opponent and team's response to the loss:
“I don't worry about them responding. We just have to do it. We did it in the Georgia Tech game. We have to do it on a consistent basis. I think the difference with [Duke's] team is that they force you to think the game by switching on defense, cross-matching and things of that nature. So you really have to know how to play and in doing that you have to be tough mentally as well as physically. A lot of teams don't do what they do. I'm not concerned about it, what I am is pleased with the effort we gave and pleased with how hard we played. We should have made a couple more shots, and obviously the defense in the second half, but I'm not really concerned. I think we need to get another one in that situation and win it and then get another one and try to build on that.”
Players Mentioned
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