Chattanooga Basketball Postgame Quotes
Chattanooga at UT Martin
Kathleen & Tom Elam Center – Martin, Tenn.
Tuesday – December 18, 2018

Lamont Paris, Head Coach
Opening statement after tough 75-72 loss on buzzer-beater three.
"There's not much you can do with that shot, specifically. We allowed ourselves to get in a position where we needed to have some great efforts from a couple people at the end of the game. It just wasn't a good day for us. It wasn't a good day at all, we didn't have that juice. We should have been down at least 14 at halftime. We were very fortunate to not be down that much. We had no business being that close at halftime with the way we played. We didn't play well. We were loose with the ball and just not sharp enough."
 
On defending the pick-and-roll; overall defensive efforts.
"They slipped out of a couple for sure. We just had so many mistakes. We gave up at least 10 second chance points and allowed 11 offensive rebounds. You're going to have days where you don't defend the pick and roll well or the other guy is hitting all the shots he throws up. But I don't think you shouldn't be able to rebound the ball well during any given game. We had some ball screen stuff going on at the end of the game and maybe we should have started to attack earlier, but at the end of the day, we just didn't play very well. We didn't play in a way that the basketball spirits would have made it inclined for the game to go our way. We couldn't get over the hump when we needed to make some plays."

On what to tell the team moving forward after close loss. 
"You tell them the truth. I know we have a young team, but they will have enough people telling them that they did a great job. I will tell them the truth that we shouldn't have put ourselves in that situation. When you don't box out on one play, or can't get a loose ball, those are the game-altering plays. You play good enough defense and then give them a second chance and you have to do it all over again. The plays right around the basket that we didn't finish strong on. All the fundamental plays, at this level of basketball, you have to make or you won't win many games. Those are the plays that ultimately decide the outcome of the game."

Donovann Toatley, Fr.-G
On slow start in opening half & adjusting before halftime.
"I think we definitely came out very sluggish. We have been on a four-day road trip and we just took a tough loss at Ole Miss on Sunday. It was hard to bounce back and have the morale to be competitive right out of the gate so we got off to slow start. As a team, we pulled it together late in the first half. We hit some shots and the energy started to improve. We started to look like the real UTC team that we are."

On the constant fight this team has shown this season.
"I play with a very persistent group of guys. I love the way we fight on any given day. We never feel like we're out of the game whether we're down two with 20 seconds to go or down 20 with two seconds. I think that we always believe that there's a chance for us to come back and win. I think we showed that in most of the games so far this season. Even though we have had a rough season so far, we have fought hard in every game. I believe that come conference time, we're going to be the real team and the real UTC that the coaching staff and players know we're capable of being."

Jerry Johnson, Jr., R-Jr.-G
On game-tying three pointer with 1.3 seconds left in regulation.
"Ramon [Vila] set a down screen and I kind of shrugged my guy off. I took a couple dribbles to the middle, pump faked, defender went for it, and I had a good look at the rim."

On what to take away from this game moving forward.
"One thing that we have to take away from this game is that we came out really flat and they got some easy buckets. Especially in conference play, it means more to all the guys. Everyone just wants to get wins for the better of the season and get better as a team late in the year. A team like UNC Greensboro, who is a veteran team, you won't see them come out flat like we did today."