St. John's University Athletics
Postgame Quotes: St. John's 61, West Virginia 66
1/29/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 29, 2006
Norm Roberts
St. John's Head Coach
On today's game:
"First half we obviously didn't play very well. They are a terrific offensive team. They can really shoot the basketball. A lot of shots they made, we did have hands in their face. Give Kevin Pittsnogle credit. He is a tremendous player. He has tremendous guts. He will put the shots up. They have a senior-laden team who had to make plays at key moments to get them the win. I am really proud of my guys because they played with energy. I told them to not worry about it, go onto the next play and I thought our guys did a good job doing that in the second half."
On West Virginia:
"You don't want to play a half court game against West Virginia because when you have that many guys that can shoot even with a pretty good defensive team, which I think we are, it is just tough."
On what he said to the team after the game:
"I am a proud of them. It was the shortest speech I gave them after a game. They played their tails off. That is all we can ask. That is all our fans can ask. We are going to get better. We have to take care of the basketball better. Give West Virginia credit."
On shot selection:
"We turned the ball over too much and I thought we rushed. We started to think `Let me take this one three and that will get us back.' We can't play that way. We have to understand that it is a long game. Early in the game we did a good job of attacking them inside. As a team we see them shoot 30 footers and you want to come back and do the same thing. That is not what you want to do. You have to attack them inside because they are small, but they get you to shoot outside. That does happen at times but those are things we can work on."
Phil Missere
Graduate Student, Forward
On the 18-point deficit:
"It happened all at once. It was a big deficit. We got back into the game and played hard. We battled down the stretch but we fell a little short."
On defending West Virginia:
"They have a great offense. It is difficult to guard. You have to stay underneath them so they don't beat you back door. They can also all shoot threes. We tried to be aggressive, but we didn't want to be beat back door. They are a great team and have a difficult offense (to guard)."
Lamont Hamilton
Junior, Forward
On the slow start:
"At the beginning we were a little hesitant but we picked up."
On the rest of the season:
"We are definitely not satisfied. We just have to focus more on details. We have to not just win the second half, we have to play both halves."
John Beilein
West Virginia Head Coach
On today's game:
"They all take it personally when they don't make their foul shots at the end of the game. I am trying to stress how great this win is with how St. John's has been the last two Big East games. This was a good win for us. We have toughed out three road wins now and that is tough to do that in this league."
On losing leads in games:
"I think that is a pattern in college basketball. Look at Villanova yesterday. Villanova has a lot more scorers than we do. I know we had two turnovers but I thought we had good shots. We just didn't make them and the other team is charging at you. If you look at the offensive rebounding numbers, we can play great defense but people are still going to get big baskets. I don't think we are alone. Maybe we lost a little bit of aggressiveness. I thought we took a couple of shots where the shot clock was too high for a road team."
Kevin Pittsnogle
Senior, Center
On handling the St. John's pressure:
"I thought we did pretty good against their pressure. We didn't turn the ball over too much. We had one or two turnovers against their pressure defense late in the game. We missed our free throws that we normally make but we will get back to that."
On losing leads in games:
"There have been games where we have given away leads, UCLA for example. We know we will make plays at the end of games. We are a senior-laden team and we know how to win games."
On being on top of the Big East standings:
"We know we have a target on our back but we haven't played some of the tougher teams like Connecticut, Pitt [Pittsburgh] and Notre Dame. They are pretty good teams. We will see after we play them."
