George Washington University Athletics
Post-Game Quotes From Gw Head Coach Tom Penders
11/9/1999 12:00:00 AM | General
GW vs. Five Star Hawks (Exhibition)
November 9, 1999
On the first game "It was good, considering that we did a lot of things wrong. We started off a little nervous and rushing shots, and we were too anxious defensively."
"If you had told me that Bernard [Barrow] was going to play 40 minutes tonight, I would have questioned that. But his numbers weren't too bad. And he was playing against some good solid guys that were just out of college."
"It was a good exhibition game for us. We got a chance to play against a team that has played some games, and obviously were not nervous about playing us. It's much better than playing a foreign team that plays a totally different style."
"We didn't go into the game scouting them. We didn't know anything about what they did and we didn't want to know anything they did. We wanted to approach it like it was the first game of a tournament. We didn't tell our players anything they were going to do. We had to make adjustments during the game and we made some good adjustments. We switched certain things that they did in the first half so they didn't have the open look. On other guys, we doubled instead of doubling every time the ball screen was set."
"There were a lot of good things out there"the strength of our team is we have two guards with the ability to break down the other team's defense. I was happy that these guys [Val Brown and Bernard Barrow] had a good game that they can build some confidence from."
On 3-point shots: "Val Brown is a great 3-point shooter. Bernard is a good one. He rushed a couple in the first half because he was without Val and we were struggling. But I'm getting to feel like the kids have a lot more confidence in [Albert] Roma and getting it inside to him. And eventually Patrick [Ngongba] will get more. He missed an entire week of practice because he was sick."
"I didn't expect Val and Bernard to come out and play as well as they did in their first time in uniform. They weren't perfect, but they played hard, made big buckets, made big free throws, clamped down a little bit more on defense against an explosive offensive team."
On GW's team defense: "We don't have a lot in. We're trying to be real basic and not move too far too fast. But again, we outscored a team by 15 points. That's the only margin I'm looking at" It's not what the other team scores per game; it's what you do and the differential"But am I pleased yet with our defense? No, we have a long way to go."
