St. John's University Athletics
Postgame Quotes: December 15, 2007: St. John's vs. Niagara
12/15/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 15, 2007
- Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery
- Head Coach Norm Roberts
Opening Statement:
"Niagara is a good team; they played extremely hard. They got a lot of our loose balls, then that miracle shot at the end. But those things happen. That's what makes basketball the game that it is. We were careless with the ball and we make no excuses. We got into foul trouble and had to play some different line ups and do some different things. Niagara played well. They made plays when they needed to make plays and we came up short. But we're going to learn from it and we'll get better. I'm looking forward to the Hawaii trip and playing better."
On playing without Justin Burrell and Tomas Jasiulionis:
"It hurts because those are our big guys. Those are our biggest scorers inside. Sean [Evans] is not a real back to the basket player but he plays with a ton of energy and that changes our line up a little. The reason why Justin fouled out is because we didn't guard the ball up top and we didn't guard the way we wanted to guard them, which caused a lot of contact. No matter what, we needed to step up and make plays. We didn't do the things we needed to do to win."
On Niagara switching up their defense:
"We worked on different defenses for five straight days. But it's not really what the other team will do. Niagara is a very athletic team."
On St. John's last few possessions:
"I thought they were o.k., but not great. Obviously without Justin's [Burrell] inside presence, then they will really try to play out on you. Larry [Wright] got a good shot and made a big basket driving in the lane and that's kind of what we wanted to do. We wanted to try to drive it. We got kind of got caught in between."
On tonight's game:
"We shot 50 percent from the field and 50 percent from the free throw line. They shot 46 free throws. You are not going to win many games when they shoot 46 free throws."
Sophomore Guard Larry Wright
On tonight's game:
"It started with a lot of fouls called while driving. It's very hard to beat a team like that. They got a lot of free throws and knocked them down when they need to."
On Niagara's coverage:
"They showed a slight double team on us. I saw Eugene [Lawrence] at the end and I kicked the ball out to him."
On the type of shots they were getting at the end:
"We had a lot of open looks, but we would probably prefer to drive a little bit more and get to the free throw line. We had open looks, we just weren't getting them down."
Freshman Guard Paris Horne
On Niagara's rotating defenses:
"We just needed to execute our offense. We knew that they would come in and around. Coach told us they would throw different defenses at us, we just should have executed a little bit better."
Niagara Head Coach Joe Mihalich
Opening Statement:
"This is a great win for us. We had some keys coming into this game. We talked about offensive toughness. The first thing that jumps out at me is that we only turned the ball over seven times and our freshman point guard had four assists and no turnovers. The only way we could give ourselves a chance was to do that. We got out-rebounded by one, which was another key for us. The other thing I thought was effective was changing the defenses; we wanted to keep them off balance. Those were the three keys we wanted to focus on. At the end of the day we guessed right. They seemed to be the things we needed to do and we came out of the game with a big win."
On the achievement of Niagara beating St. John's:
"We're awful proud of winning. It's not just another game for us. This is a 90 game rivalry; we've been playing them since 1909. It's a special game for us. Its not just another game, its not just another win."
On trying to get St. John's in foul trouble:
"Charron's really the only go to guy we have in the post and what does help us is that we try to play fast which means there's a lot of possessions. When there are a lot of possessions, the percentages go up when you might foul. We push the ball and that keeps the defense off balance."
Senior Forward Charron Fisher
On Justin Burrell fouling out the game :
"I thought it was big for us. He was big inside and was giving us problems. Once he went out of the game, we knew we had a better chance."
On taking on more of a scoring responsibility:
"My main goal for tonight was getting to the foul line. We wanted to do whatever we could to get this road win because we've been struggling. I had to do whatever I had to do to get it done."
On being the nation's leading scorer:
"I have great teammates and they make it easy for me to put up the numbers I put up. They're so good that you can't leave them open and that allows me to get one-on-one match ups all night so and I can exploit my defender."
