North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State-Notre Dame Coaches Quotes
2/12/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
NC State coach Jim Valvano
"At the first timeout, we planned to run our regular offense. We obviously weren't going to get the ball inside. The second timeout, we told them to run our 3-2 set. That's when we put the ball in the hands of Sidney and put our best two shooters, Myers and Gannon, on the wings. Sidney is supposed to penetrate and dish off to either man if he's covered. Terry really was wide open. You couldn't ask for a better shot. He'd just hit one right before from that same spot. We wanted that to happen and it did. The ball just didn't go in. What are you going to do?
"We really didn't play very well. We didn't want to get behind, because we knew how they'd play. We didn't shoot well, from the floor or from the free-throw line. I don't want to make excuses for Thurl, but he does have the flu and didn't feel good. It certainly wasn't one of his better days. We still had the opportunity to win, but the ball wouldn't go down. It would have been nice if it had fallen. We've had adversity before. We just have to come back. It was a disappointing loss.
"Charles plays well in a half-court game. He played well against Louisville, Missouri, Memphis State and anytime the clock's not there. Really, though, it's a little easier for us in an uptempo game."
Notre Dame coach Digger Phelps
"We were just determined to win today. I liked our composure because I felt we had to control the tempo. It's hard to beat these guys when they jump out ahead at home.
"In the first segment we played man-to-man, then after the timeout we put in Andree to give us a shot at the defensive rebound and we played a 1-3-1 and dropped off and gave them the wing shot. Gannon is a good shooter, but we didn't want them to have a chance to pump it inside and get the foul. Today, we gambled and won.
"We've got a bunch of young players who sometimes don't understand what it takes to win on the road. These are the kind of games we've lost before. We lost one at UCLA on the last sho like that and I told the kids afterward that these things will balance out.
"I thought we dictated the tempo at both ends of the floor. We were looking to score off the delay situations. We mixed a lot of defenses. I thought that really helped us out. We wanted to jam the middle and force them to beat us from the perimeter. We stuck it out with the defense.
"Yes, I think this puts us back in the NCAA Tournament picture. Now we need to beat DePaul and Dayton and then along with our wins over Marquette and South Carolina, we will have beaten all the independents in our area. I think you'll see some teams in there with 11 losses. Out of Wake, Maryland and NC State, I think they've got to take two of the three.
"We've been waiting threee years for Tom Sluby to explode in a big game like this. We thought State would be vulnerable on the baseline in driving situations and that's what he did."
