Washington vs. Long Beach State
November 26, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 26, 2007
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Washington Head Coach Lorenzo Romar
General Statement:
"There is a good chance that in the next few days on my answering machine will be about five shot doctors or five psychiatrists. People are going to start calling saying, `I'm the guy that can help you with your free throws.' We got through it. Obviously if we do a better job at the foul line things would've turned out a little differently. I thought we started out playing very good basketball. Somewhere along the first half we lost our edge. We slowly took off the defensive pressure a little bit. We did well against the zone, but when they went man we played offense as if it were a zone. We need to do a better job of shifting gears in that regard."On Quincy Pondexter: "One of the most pleasing things for me as a coach is to see Quincy Pondexter have an effect on the game down the stretch without scoring a whole lot. He did a lot of things down the stretch to help us. He hit a couple of threes, but he also got some good rebounds and made some good plays for us. That was good to see because he is talented. The more he is able to do those things and be more rounded and complete, the better for everybody."
On poor free throw shooting: "Sometimes when you are drained mentally or whatever it is, your free throws go. We haven't shot the ball well from the foul line this year. We are usually a decent foul shooting team, but I just wonder if the long trip back and the quick turnaround had anything to do with it. Time will tell. If we shoot better in the next few games then we'll have to say that maybe that was the case. It can be mental. Sometimes you may not be tired, but you can be mentally tired."
On turnovers: "I felt good about the turnovers. If we would have really been sharp we probably would've only had about seven tonight. But still, 13 is our number and we were right at 13. I thought that was a positive. I said before the game that we had to cut down on our turnovers. This was a start - now we have to build on it."
On Joel Smith: "If you've noticed in our games whenever Joel's feet are set he is pretty accurate from three. Tonight he got a lot of open looks so he knocked those down. In preseason practices I remember specifically telling Joel, `why would you turn that shot down, I think it is going in every time.' It is just a matter of him getting open looks and tonight he got them."
On being out-rebounded: "It was their effort and hustle, but when we watch the film we will see that we didn't do a very good job of boxing out. We have been up and down in that area. We missed a whole host of box-outs a few games ago and came back the next day and did a better job. Against Texas A&M we didn't do a very good job, but we came back against Syracuse and did a fantastic job. We have to be more consistent with that."
On Venoy Overton: "Sometimes he is too unselfish. I would compare him to Nate Robinson in this way: sometimes when it seems like they are out of control they are almost at their best. If you stop him you take away that initiative he has that usually works out for him. Tonight it didn't, but overall in six games he almost had a two-to-one turnover to assist ratio."
On Matthew Bryan-Amaning: "I thought Matthew went out and competed. He took his time offensively. We've been trying to get him to slow down. He tries to score 20 points in one possession and we are trying to get him to slow down. He did that tonight."
Long Beach State Head Coach Dan Monson
General Comments:
"It's a process for us right now to try to get better. I think this game will help us in that. It was a tough environment. We got down early. It was the first time this year our guys didn't play and separate when that happened. A tough environment against a tough team. You have to credit Washington, they're at a better stage right now in their program and with their team. They didn't panic. They did a good job of making the plays down the stretch when they needed to to win the game."On Washington: "We felt like we couldn't play them straight up. We told them that we've got to take Brockman out of the game; I thought our guys did a pretty good job of that and make somebody else beat us. Dentmon stepped up and did that. I thought our guys stuck to the game plan. As we got fatigued, Brockman became a factor and then it was just too much. For our guys to come back and tie the game is a credit to them coming together as a team. We were not equipped emotionally or physically to do that two or three weeks ago."
On stand-out Husky players: "I'm a fan, so I've seen Washington play a lot of games. I know how good Brockman is. It wasn't one of his better games and hopefully we had something to do with that. Dentmon was really the difference in the game. He hit big shot after big shot. Coming into the game we wanted to make them beat us from the outside and they did that. It wasn't just Dentmon - Smith came in and hit four in a row."
On stand-out Long Beach players: "I thought it was a good collective team effort. We had five guys in double figures. I thought Artis Gant did a good job with controlling the tempo. He's not a true point guard but he stepped up tonight and did a good job with the basketball. Our guys played about as well as they're capable of at this point in the season."
