University of Memphis Athletics
Memphis Basketball Postgame Quotes
Dec 20, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 20, 2004
Memphis Head Coach John Calipari
"We should have been up 20 in the first half. We were up 12 (28-16), and all of a sudden, we were walking out of timeouts and not concentrating, and then we broke down three or four times in a row and then we gave them hope. Our level of play, our scrapiness, went away in the second half. You can't let teams think they are hanging in there."
"Offensively, we are not very good right now and we have to figure out how to be more specific in what we are trying to do. We still aren't making shots we have been making."
"We were better in the first half. We showed some good signs. But now we are learning that we can't finish the half like we finished it. I'm disappointed but I'm not giving up on them. This is where we are as a team right now. We don't have many guys playing well right now and we're just going to have to get back to square one."
Louisiana Tech Head Coach Keith Richard
"We couldn't have picked a better thing to happen to our basketball team as we go into a break. "
"It was completely two different halves for us offensively. I thought we guarded well the whole game. Our struggles at the half were all on the offensive end, and that's what we talked about at halftime, was how can we play better offense. We were playing hard enough, and Memphis was too. There was some good defense going on from both teams. I think the one big thing we told our players was that as we got ball inside, we needed to make one more pass. We were getting it in there in the first half and taking a lot of contested shots or getting shots blocked, and we want our players to make an extra pass whether it be inside for a layup or outside for a three. I think that happened in the second half and really helped us."
"I think our players were a little shocked when they came out. We told them how athletic Memphis was, but I think they were still a little shell-shocked at how athletic they really were. We missed some putbacks and some easy layups, and it seemed like nothing was going right on that end. Then, we got a lot cleaner looks in the second half by going ahead and making that extra pass."
