George Washington University Athletics
Post Game Quotes
11/28/1999 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
USF Coach Seth Greenberg
"You have to give [SirValiant] Brown credit. He made some good shots. But I thought at the beginning of the second half, we came out and we didn't contest shots, we didn't stick to what we wanted to do defensively in terms of our game plan, and that's disappointing.""When you lose your intensity and your focus defensively, I think it carried over on the offensive end in terms of we lost our energy. That's a bad combination, that's for sure."
"Quite honestly, I don't think the 25 turnovers were a factor in the game. I think our turnovers came from not being strong with the basketball. We got balls knocked out of our hand, we got stripped on offensive rebounds, we got stripped on defensive rebounds. We just weren't strong with the ball...really, our turnovers were decision-making turnovers."
On the fact that GW has already played three games and this is USF's first. "It wasn't an advantage at halftime. I think we just had some people who really didn't contribute."
On SirValiant Brown
"He makes a lot of bad shots, that makes him a good player. He gets to the foul line... If someone else was coaching him and he had eight turnovers, they'd say, why is he in there for 36 minutes? "
GW Coach Tom Penders
On his 500th career win "I'm very, very pleased to do it at George Washington because these people believed in me and I can't say enough about the support they've given me since I've been here. Everybody from the guy who hands out towels--I'm serious-the administration...everybody's been unbelievable. I hope to get them at least a hundred more.""I'm well aware that it's about the players and the coaches, and all those things, and the ability to hang in and face adversity. When you coach at schools like Tufts , Columbia, Fordham, and Rhode Island most of your career-and Rhode Island right now is pretty good, but they hadn't won in 10 years-this is the first job I've had that isn't in a real losing, downer situation. So I'm very, very proud of it."
On the game
"This team is going to take your heart some nights, and they're going to win your heart the next. We're young, and some of our most talented players are young. Although Chris Monroe had a rough night tonight and didn't play a lot of minutes, it's because Mike King was playing so well."
"It was a team effort. We got a little balance and we got some stuff inside, which was good. We're working on that, we're focusing on that. I thought our defense was outstanding. We had a hand in the face all night. We really played great defense and fortunately, we did because if we didn't, we would have lost the game. We certainly can do better at the free-throw line."
"We beat a very good basketball team that's picked to win Conference USA, their division, and had to come from behind to do it. It was a team that I thought was pretty well prepared for us, they knew what we were going to run for the most part, and our kids did a really good job coming back."
"At halftime, I just told the kids I thought we were going to win the game, we couldn't play any worse, and we were within range of a very good basketball team."
"It's a young team. I'm trying to tell these guys that nobody's going to be afraid of them this year. This is a rebuilding year, but this is still GW. When we saw Houston celebrating after like they won the national championship after they beat us in the third game in three days, I think the kids realized that nobody's going to take us lightly. And I know that Seth Greenberg did not take us lightly. He's preparing for this game and I thought he had a really good game plan for us, but our kids won the game. It wasn't anything we did as coaches. Our kids won the basketball game."
On the play of Mike King
"Mike's got to move without [the ball]. Mike is not the kind of guy you can run plays for. You run him off the staggered double, he's almost uncomfortable when he's open sometimes. He's much better moving with out it and playing off Bernard and Val because they'll give it to him if he moves. If he's standing and gets open, sometimes he has a problem...He's learning to play with these two guys and I'd like him to get 15, 16 shots a game. He went to the line about five times in the act of shooting so that wipes out six shot attempts."
On USF's press
"We faced it against Oklahoma and Houston in Alaska, so we anticipated it. And we did work a good hour on it the other night; it's the 1-3-1 half court trap. The first half, we were attacking up the sideline, I wanted to go to the middle. Instead of just passing our way through it, Val can break it down himself. He can take two with him and hit the open man ahead of him. Same with Bernard. When Bernard and Val have the ball in their hands and they stay low, they can break down anybody's defense."
"They were trying to play Val Brown real tight, which is suicide. He got a lot of those free throws because they had to hand check and were holding him to keep him in control."
"We wanted to get the ball reversed and go to the middle and attack. And whenever we could, run our full-court transition. I thought we did a better job of that in the second half. And obviously, we scored 54 points in the second half. We did a better job of getting it out and going. We did a much better job on the boards. We just looked like we were determined to win the basketball game throughout the second half."
On SirValiant Brown
"We 're trying to get him when he doesn't have the three and has a guy on him to get him closer and go around. He's got great explosive speed. He made a few buckets, and he had some really hard fouls against him and 16 for 19 from the foul line says a lot about his aggressiveness and assertiveness. Defensively, he does a lot of good things out there as well for a freshman. He's still not perfect."
"He hangs in and listens, he's very coachable and wants to be very good. He hates to lose, and there's no limit to how good he can be and where he can lead us at some point, but I don't want him feeling he's got to carry it all himself.
SirValiant Brown
"I was missing shots, basically. I'm not going to put that on anybody. I had open looks for shots that weren't going in. But I didn't lose confidence at all.""Early in the game, they were pressing us and we were rattled. Once coach told us at halftime how we were going to break their press, we started doing it. But it was rattling us."
