Western Carolina at Chattanooga
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Chattanooga, Tenn., McKenzie Arena
Postgame Quotes

Lamont Paris, Head Coach
Opening thoughts after loss to Western Carolina.
"My initial thoughts without having re-watching the game yet, I know we didn't do a good job on the boards...not even an adequate job. They rebounded half of their misses. You can't allow that to happen and then think you have a good chance to win. That was a big factor. We turned the ball over and they capitalized on them. Forget everything else, how you shoot the ball or systematically sticking to your report. If you don't fight on the boards and do a good job of controlling your possession, it's an uphill fight. And that's what it was tonight."

On what was the difference tonight.
"We shot 46 percent tonight for the game, you should win. Most times, you should win. If you don't turn the ball over at the rate we did tonight, then you should win the game. I thought our quality of shot in the second half was a lot better than the rest of the game. We came out and played better basketball. There was a lot of times where we settled for a three where we could have created something for someone else."

On starting second half with better energy.
"I thought we came out in the second half with some juice. When we started playing well then that turned into some good basketball. You can't rely on digging yourself out of a hole. You have to go about your business methodically and knowing at the end of the day to not get too high when you're playing well or get too low when you're playing poorly. A lot of this is just maturing."

Makinde London, R-Jr.-F
On the play of Western Carolina.
"You have to tip your cap to Western tonight. They came in aggressive and prepared to go to war. We have to find that mentality and a lot of our success is going to depend on how we focus on things. We need to pay more attention to details all the way through and it'll help us out."

On the play and matchup of Western's Mike Amius (27 points, 8 rebounds).
"He's a great player. He came aggressive and thought the game through. He had a lot of good looks. It's never a one-on-one battle. It's a team versus a team. We do what we do together. Guarding him was our mishap tonight. We just have to go back and prepare to get better for the next one."

On settling for three's & getting the ball in the post.
"We're a good three-point shooting team. We can score from behind the arc. But it comes down to focus. We need to get the ball in the post to give us more in-and-out looks. We need to put more focus of getting the ball there and using each other to accomplish that."

Rodney Chatman, So.-G
On turning the ball over and rebounding.
"Turnovers have been a problem for us all season. We have to clean that up moving forward. Second chance points and offensive rebounds killed us tonight and we have to be better at that too. We need to compete, box out and rebound as a team."

On settling for too many three point attempts.
"That's always a factor. As guards, we didn't do a good job of that tonight and we settled for too many threes."

On trying to improve rebounding.
"It's tough that we're not the biggest or tallest. We have to have a will to help our big guys out on boxing out. Long rebounds kill us and that's more on the guards. We need to crash more and tip the ball to get more rebounds."