Chattanooga Basketball Postgame Quotes
Western Carolina at Chattanooga
McKenzie Arena – Chattanooga, Tenn.
Thursday – Jan. 8, 2015
UTC Head Coach Will Wade
Thoughts on sophomore Justin Tuoyo's energy:
“It was awesome. Everybody was awesome. When your down key guys you have to have other guys step up. Tuoyo stepped up. Casey stepped up. Rico was phenomenal. His offensive stat line was good, but he did just a tremendous job on the kid Harrelson.
“Herralson is sixth in the NCAA averaging three-and-a-half made threes a game.; he hardly got any clean looks. He hit two of five. He [Rico] did a tremendous job on him. That was a huge part of our game plan.
“Everybody contributed. I'm proud of everybody. You guys finally got to see a flash of Chuck; what we get to see in practice all the time when he took that thing coast to coast and laid it in. That's what he does in practice. We just have to get him aggressive and get that thing translating. I'm proud of all of our guys. We found a way.”
Where was the energy and feistiness coming from in this game?
“Well we knew we had to be like that. You're down your starting point guard; you have to be like that. You know we're like that anyway as a team. That's kind of my personality a little bit and it rubs off on some of the guys. You got to find a way. We don't make excuses in our program, and I told them 'no excuses next man up. All the rest of you guys you know you wanted to play so here it is. Show time. Let's play.'
“We don't give ourselves any excuses or any outs about anything. We're just full steam ahead; next man up, next guy ready to go.”
Is everyone else feeding off of Tuoyo's blocks too?
“I mean that helps. It helps. Those are huge plays. He's found his home down there and he's doing a great job. On top of his blocks, he's made his first combo move. We've been working on that in … he's playing at a really high level right now. He's preparing at a high level. He's doing what he needs to do.”
A thought on Casey's run of twelve points in eight minutes.
“That was huge. He's our leading scorer for a reason. He did a nice job. I thought first half he pressed too much. They were sagging off of him. He was trying to drive it in there and turn it over a little bit too much. Second half he settled down. He didn't have as many turnovers. That was good for us.”
Is there anything extra special about the performance tonight?
“No, that's a toughness game. We have tough guys. I mean that's a heck of an effort to get yourself off the floor; how you respond. That's a big thing in basketball and in life and our guys responded the right way. It would be easy to say 'oh we lost to Wofford; oh we lost our starting point.'
“You can make excuse after excuse after excuse or you can say we're not going to do that. We're going to pick ourselves up. We're going to find a way to win the game. It may not be pretty but we're going to find a way. That's what we did, and I'm proud as heck of our guys for that. That's done just the culture of your program, through the summer workouts. That's how you win those types of games.”
Sophomore Justin Tuoyo
Thoughts on the intensity in the first half.
“It's a SoCon competition game. We played a great team; real physical, real tough. Nobody is going to back down in this league. We came out went on a run. They came back, bounced back so it was just a tough game.”
Was there any particular reason why it seemed more intense tonight?
“We had to step up. We were down one player with (Greg Pryor). One of our leaders was down tonight so everyone had to step up a little bit more; do a little bit more. Everybody contributed, came off the bench, did what they had to do. So it helped us out.”
How hard was it to stay focused on the objective to win?
“It wasn't really the point of remaining focused. We just got together. We knew it was a tough, physical team. We needed that today, and we just stayed together. Basketball is a game of runs, so they wanted to run. We just all got together, buckled down and tried to get a stop.”
Junior Casey Jones
Do you feed off of Tuoyo's energy?
“Yes, everybody feeds off of it; everybody in the arena. The crowd goes crazy, the players go off and it's just like a party when he does things like he done tonight. So we love him. I wish he'd do it every night.”
Anything extra special about tonight's win considering how Monday night ended?
“Yea I think so. We had to bounce back. We owe it to our fans. We owe it to our coach. (Greg Pryor) wasn't here, and he was feeling a little down about last game so we had to bring it out tonight.”
Does this feel like a good win to beat a physical team without your starting guard?
“Definitely. If we could do this without one of our best players, then you know when he's back we'll just be even more powerful. “
