North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State-UNLV Coaches Quotes
3/20/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
NC State head coach Jim Valvano
"Our job is to be in the position to win at the end, and we've done that five straight times now. We almost took ourselves out of that position today, getting down by 12, but we got the job done down the stretch.
"We didn't call a timeout to set up the final shot because we were on a roll. I thought about it, but they were unsettled and we knew what we wanted to do anyway. If I call a timeout, it gives [Tarkanian] a chance to get his team settled. I mean, we are looking at a team that had had the lead by 12 points and all of a sudden they can lose it and the last thing I wanted to do was give them a chance to get settled down. It was kind of wild out there and we wanted to keep it that way. We just ran our motion game. At the 10-second mark, we wanted Whit to take it to the hole. It was a great follow up by T, not once, but twice.
"We started doing a lot of atypical things. We were giving them three-point plays, fouling them inside. We had stopped playing 'smart' basketball. But when we were down by 12, I just told the kids not to quit. I told them that when we do 'smart' things at the end, something good usually happens.
"I don't know what it is, but in the last five minutes of games, Dereck really plays. When we were down 12, it wasn't the position we wanted to be in but we did some smart things. We started attacking more. We wanted to be in a position to win. They were playing great basketball and we had to start fouling."
UNLV head coach Jerry Tarkanian
We played hard and, at times, I thought we played well. But we let it get away from us. We missed clutch free throws when we had to have them. That's been a problem all year.
"North Carolina State always makes the big play. We let them get too many offensive rebounds. We knew that was going to be a problem. We had some match-up problems with them. Larry Anderson had to give up five inches when he was guarding Bailey.
"It's pretty tough to get a play with two seconds to go.
"We were playing man-to-man defense (at the end). I don't know how he got open for the tip-in. I thought we defendedwell on the last play.
"North Carolina State has as good a chance as anybody to go to the Final Four.
"What they did two nights ago had nothing to do with it. If we make our free throws, it doesn't matter. It was a heart-breaking loss. We've had our share of wins like this.
"We felt good when we had a 12-point lead, but we didn't think the game was over."
