Chattanooga Mocs Men's Basketball
Post-Game Quotes vs. ETSU
Feb. 21, 2015
HEAD COACH WILL WADE
On Chattanooga's defensive effort
“Except for the fouling, it was good. I wish we would have kept them off the foul line, but we really locked down. I was not real happy at halftime but to our guys' credit, I am usually pretty calm at half no matter what's going on but I felt like we gave them eight points. We gave them the back door to start the game which we worked on. We gave them two off of a back screen, two different back screens, for four points and then we weren't ready on the out-of-bounds defense, and they got the dunk which was eight points. I was pretty fired up about that. I don't mind giving up points, but I don't like giving up stuff that we can control, so I thought we did a better job in the second half guarding them. I think they were without a basket for about 12 minutes, so we knocked it down and did a nice job rebounding the ball, grabbing around 43 rebounds is pretty good, but we're still turning the ball over too much and not getting enough shots at the basket which really hurts. We've got to get better at that or it's going to be our undoing here down the stretch.”
On preparing for ETSU's guards
“We didn't want them to get a bunch of threes. They are a little bit smaller guards, and we have pretty good length. We want to make them finish over our length. They were 4-18 from the three, now they had some open looks but Rembert only got two 3's off which is critical. Teams are pretty much going to shoot their percentage. They shoot 30 some odd threes in a game, but we held them to eighteen. They didn't shoot their percentage tonight, but the best way to stop them is to limit their opportunities to make them. I thought we did a really good job guarding the 3pt line.”
On getting 20 wins on the season
“It's good, but we're not going to stop the season because we won 20 games. It is a good accomplishment, and we talked about it. Our guys really wanted to do that. I always feel like you need a mission statement for your season. Everyone has goals, and we certainly have goals, process goals and result goals, and all our goals are still on the table for the year. You have to play for something more. The mission statement for the year was to restore respect for Chattanooga Basketball. We have kind of lost it and one of the things we pointed to was getting to 20 wins to restore respect. I think we have done that. We are a big game when we go on the road, and we go into some hostile environments. The people in town are starting to catch on. That crowd was awesome tonight, the students were awesome. I mean we had 5200 here on a snowy night in the south. That's tough to do.“
Sophomore Justin Tuoyo
On defensive effort in the second half
“We just came in at half time. We felt like they out-played us in the first half. Everyone had their defensive assignment. We felt like we had to lock up in the second half. We did a good job at that. Everybody did their part and it helped us out.”
Thoughts on going into the last weekend of the season
“We focus on ourselves. We have to get better Monday and Tuesday. We leave Wednesday and then we have two tough road games for us. It's just going to give us momentum for the tournament, so we have to close that out. If Wofford loses that's great, but at the same time we're worried about us. We're focused on us really.”
Do you realize how dominant (team) were being defensively?
“We look up and Coach Wes (Long) tells us 'We did it. We did it. They haven't scored in a couple of minutes.' Then you look up, and you see we can do this. It helped us out. I don't think you realize it as you're playing, but once you stop, you notice it a little bit. It helped us. We focus on getting stops in a row, and that's what we did tonight.”
Ronrico White
On 20 Wins
“It feels great. We actually wanted to do it for the crowd too. This city deserves it, for us to get to 20 wins here. That was a real impact for us to try and win at home and do it for each other and do it for the fans.”
On student crowd
“It was great. We can't thank them enough. That's why after the alma mater we had to go over there and show our appreciation for them. We thanked them for it.”
On emotions going into senior night
“Walking out of the tunnel it was crazy. Everyone is looking at you. You have your teammates probably back there making jokes. You're walking out there with your family. It's a tremendous experience. I can't thank everybody who's helped me from when I first got here until now enough. Once the game got started, we kind of came out a little slow, but we picked it up. We played a good half of basketball in the second half.”
ETSU Head Coach Murry Bartow
Opening statement
“I thought Chattanooga played a heck of a second half. We felt good at halftime. We liked the way the game was going in the first half. We felt really good about the second half; they just dismantled us. We offensively couldn't get things going. Defensively, Will [Wade] has them playing hard, and they defended hard, shut us down. Rashawn Rembert is one of our best players. He hasn't practiced for three days. He's been sick, so it didn't help. He played but was a shell of himself. Not having Devin Harris has really hurt us. We were basically playing with two of our best players not able to play. When you're playing a really good Chattanooga team, Will [Wade] has done a really good job with this team, they're playing really well. He has good guards, he has good wings, and he's obviously got a good big inside. We just didn't have enough fire power. We fought hard, we competed hard, but they played a great second half and kind of dismantled us. Congratulations to them. They're on a good run right now. We have to get healthy, get Rashawn and Devin back and hopefully we can finish strong.”
On Rashawn Rembert
“He's been sick all week, so that really hurt us. He wasn't able to practice today at shoot around. We didn't think he'd play. He wanted to try to play, so I tried to play him for twenty minutes. We're very dependent on him to score. We're very dependent on Lester Wilson to score. We never got Lester going. Rashawn was sick. Jalen tried to do a lot on his own. He did some god things for us, but it just wasn't enough. Chattanooga has a nice team. I'm not sure it was anything that we didn't do. Even if we would have had a healthy Rashawn and a healthy Devin, I'm not saying that would have been good enough either. For us to be good, we need to get those two guys back.”
