Postgame Quotes
Chattanooga at Samford
Birmingham, Ala. - Pete Hannah Center
Jan. 14, 2012
Chattanooga Head Coach John Shulman
On the Samford game:
"They played good. I've watched a lot of tape on them. They could have, should have beaten Appalachian State and Western Carolina, but their last game told me everything I needed to know. They led Georgia Southern the majority of the game and got beat late in the game. They've got a good basketball team, but they haven't had a lot of breaks."
On Chattanooga's defensive play:
"Scoring 70 points I thought was good enough. There's no doubt 70 points against Samford is good enough. And 18 offensive rebounds are good enough, but we couldn't guard one-on-one at the post. If you can't guard one-on-one at the post against Samford, you've got some issues. It's tough to double in the post anyway, and it makes it really tough when they're running their Princeton offense. It's difficult, but we did a really good job with it. Our doubles in the post turned the whole second half around. We weren't getting hurt inside, they were missing shots and we were doing a better job of rebounding the ball. We were up in the second half, and I think what we have to take from it is that this doesn't derail us. It just shows us that every little play matters."
On the SoCon standings:
"I think it's Davidson and then the rest of us. The rest of us in the league are in there tight. I haven't seen everybody on tape yet, but let us get through all the people on tape and see what's what. We could have separated ourselves a little bit today, but I didn't think we lost the game. I think Samford beat us and won. They played better. We could have stolen it from them, and almost did, but it's the small plays that cost us today."
On the second half comeback:
"We're down 14 in the first half, down 12 at half and we come back to take the lead. It was a ho-hum comeback, and that was nice, but we just couldn't finish it today."
Looking ahead to the upcoming road trip:
"No doubt we have a tough road swing coming up, but I'm not dreading it. I think it is going to be good for us. We have to learn to get a little tougher and learn to win on the road. Winning on the road is completely different. We have been very spoiled because we have been at home for what seems like forever. This is going to be good for our basketball team in the long run. We are going to work on it tomorrow, take Monday off, practice hard Tuesday and ship off to Greensboro on Wednesday."
Senior Guard Keegan Bell
On Samford's play tonight:
"Thier record might not show it, but they have been playing better. They really had a close game at Georgia Southern and you could argue that they should have won that one. They are playing good basketball right now. Coach [Jimmy] Tillette does a great job. He changed things around from last year. They were playing at a very high level tonight. Our effort was there, but thing just weren't clicking. They play that funky matchup zone. Where it is kind of man, kind of not. You don't see that very often, so it can take awhile to get used to it. I felt like we came out and the first three minutes got frustrated. We played frustrated the entire game and you can't do that. When you are playing frustrated, we have not been clicking very well offensively the last three games, but it all looks good because we won two of them. We just have to get it together. We just have to have a calming sense on the floor and not get so frustrated on the offensive end."
On what makes Samford tough to play against:
"Samford always grinds it out, but they actually pushed the ball a little bit more today. Their coach has made some big difference which makes them a better basketball team. Congrats to them. They started out the game just hitting shots. They were on fire, and once we got down it was hard to pull back. We finally pulled back, but we fouled way too much. When you foul a team that much, they can stoke it in like that. We got to the hump, but we couldn't get over the hump."
Junior Guard Dontay Hampton
On a series of threes in the second half putting the Mocs back into the game:
"After hitting those couple of threes, I just knew that we were going to get over the hump. A couple of guys start fouling, little plays. We were down one with five minutes to go. Somebody [Drazen Zloravic] had it and the ball was hit out of his hand. There were a couple of momentum changes like that, which were big."
On the hustle plays that the team has gotten the past couple of games that did not go the Mocs way tonight:
"A lot of the little plays that we usually make, we did not make tonight. We just have to get back to that."
"One thing I can say is that, when we missed an opportunity, they capitalized. When we missed a rebounds, they hit a layup or got fouled to go to the free throw line. They actually shot it pretty well from the free throw line."
