Post-Game Quotes
February 10, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 10, 2008
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Washington Head Coach Lorenzo Romar
General Statement:
"We've been talking to our team about toughness and believing that we could win. We had lost both of those for a while. Today was only one day, but it was against one of, if not the nation's best team. We showed as much grit as a team can show. And trust me, that was the only way we were going to win that game. That's an outstanding basketball team. There were a number of players - obviously Justin Dentmon - who played exceptional basketball today. He played with a lot of confidence from the moment he entered the game. There were a lot of plays that were signature plays for the real story with this game. Nothing in this box score tells how many times Artem Wallace tipped that ball out, Jon Brockman tipped that ball out, the effort and the work he did trying to defend Kevin Love. Nothing in this score sheets talks about Justin Holiday's nine minutes and how he came in and did a great job defensively. Quincy Pondexter dove like Jon Brockman for the ball. And those are signature plays that need to happen every game. Our guys did it today. They were a great team. And I don't mean that in terms of an undefeated, nobody can beat you team, but a together team. That's always fun to watch."On coming back after the loss to USC: "If we didn't, they would say that we have no pride. But I think it showed that we have pride. Things like this happen, we start to hear people talk about what's wrong, saying we're not playing the way Husky Basketball is supposed to be played. And it's been like that for a while. If you keep hearing those things and you have any pride, you respond to them."
On Artem Wallace: "It's a little like Jon Brockman with [LSU's] "Big Baby" Glen Davis last year. He's strong enough to not allow Kevin Love to push him all around the floor. Artem plays close attention to detail. If you tell him how to do something, he's able to do it."
On Justin Dentmon: "I told Justin on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, `You seem to have gotten yourself in a pretty good rhythm.' What I meant by that is he is not looking to pinpoint passes and be the greatest player, but he's not making terrible decisions. You've just got to have a rhythm in what you do."
Washington Junior Artem Wallace
On Kevin Love:
"Love is a great player. What we focused on, what the scout was, was to be physical with him, front him and get backside help. We just tried to limit his touches because once he catches it, he's really good. He's a big guy, 6'10", 270 and it's a workout when you try to front him and get around him. But in the end it's worth it."On the physical nature of the game: "UCLA plays their style of basketball so we knew if we came out on them and we were physical as well, the refs were either going to call everything or they were going to let us play. We knew from the start we had to jump in and be physical and try to get it done."
On the team's morale this week: "We had a bad game on Thursday, and we needed to do something as a team to get out of it. We lost three games in a row at home. We came together as a team and talked said we needed to come ready to play from the start."
Washington Junior Justin Dentmon
On the past week:
"The last couple of days have been hard for us. We've been trying to figure out what we've been doing wrong. We're losing at home."On the change from the last three games to today: "The coaches brought us together after the Cal game and told us we have to come together, our season's not over. They said the same thing after the USC game. They said, `Don't put your heads down.' We started to believe and we came out and played hard tonight. We got it done."
On today's aggressive play: "They picked up some quick fouls, so he [Coach] told us to go right at them. They're a physical team and we're a physical team so the referees were going to let us play a bit."
On today's game as one of his best: "I've been letting my teammates down by not being aggressive. I've just been out of it. I'm trying to show them that I can pick it up. I tried my best tonight."
Head Coach Ben Howland
General Comments:
"I have to give a lot of credit to the University of Washington for doing a great job today. They did a great job pressuring us and forced 11 first half turnovers. They were more physical today. They out-rebounded us by eight. [Jon] Brockman had nine offensive rebounds alone. I thought they did a good job really playing physical and playing tough and you have to credit them. It just goes to show you that anybody can beat anybody on any given night in this conference and that is a classic example of it right there. While they're 3-7 and we're 9-1, they out-played us."On Darren Collison: "Darren just had a bad game today. Obviously Dentmon had a great game. I thought that his third foul, the technical, was a key juncture because he had to put his hands in his pockets. That was a bad time for us. We lost our composure and there is no reason for that. It was a very physical game all the way down to the ball thrown off of our guy's face."
On the inbound pass thrown off of Alfred Aboya's face: "He threw the ball off the kid's face. The official said there was nothing he could do."
On Washington's defense: "They did a great job pressuring. "They really did a great job of helping off our four man. I thought they did an outstanding job with their rotation and a good job of wearing us down. We had it down to three a couple of times. The one time Russell [Westbrook] took an off-balance shot. With Luc [Richard Mbah a Moute] being out all we are talking about is trying to control the tempo and we didn't do a good job of it."
On the Bruin's four-game losing streak in Seattle: "It's a great home court advantage. They do a great job with their fans, it gets loud and they've had good teams."
On why UCLA switched Westbrook to Dentmon late in the game: "He kept beating us."
On Brockman's offensive rebounding: "He does a great job. He's averaging almost five a game and today he had nine. Sometimes you have to rotate over and when you rotate over someone else has to block him out. It's a hard block out because he is so big and strong."
On how Washington stopped Kevin Love: "They did a good job pressuring the ball. Give them credit. I think Dentmon in particular was very good and so was the freshman kid, [Venoy] Overton."
