Chattanooga Basketball Postgame Quotes
ETSU at Chattanooga
McKenzie Arena – Chattanooga, Tenn.
Wednesday – Feb. 5, 2020

Lamont Paris, Head Coach
On dealing with ETSU's quickness.
"I don't think it came down to that. They are quicker than us, but for how many minutes did we have the lead? For almost half the game. I think we played well enough, but we made some mistakes. We gave up second chance rebounds. Some of that was quickness, some of that was athleticism and length. We got to a point, where they made their ultimate run, I wouldn't attribute it to that necessarily. We played well enough for 33 minutes of the game, and when they made their run, we did not respond in a way to be right there when you don't have your best stuff. You can't be at the seven-minute mark where we're at, then be at the three-minute mark and be where we were. You can't let that happen. Experienced teams who have been around those situations, don't allow that to happen too often."

On ETSU's dominant second half.
"They got hot. It all started with [Tray] Boyd III, in particular. We gave him a drive on the baseline for a layup and then we get caught on the screen and don't close out, then he hit a shot. The next time we guarded it fairly well and he hit and is feeling really good. It felt like we did a better job in the first half of helping and frustrating guys. I'll look at the tape and see what that looked like in the second half. My guess is that it didn't look like the first half. They shot the ball well from three. I think it came down to that stretch where we didn't play as well and we didn't handle, respond, well to that run. It should have been a mini run and you can do two things, you can go on a mini run or chip away at a very manageable lead. It gets away from you and you have to try to throw a haymaker."

On ETSU nailing a three after picking up a pair of offensive rebounds.
"It's a big play. In a game like this, it's nip and tuck for the most part. So, if you can get a lead from an optical standpoint there's some weight to that. For example, we were up six at half and I feel like if we could have thrown something in at the end and have been up nine, that's a significant deal for your psyche for both teams. That was a big play. We've talked about having to be better at that stuff. Corralling those rebounds, getting in there with one hand and fighting for those rebounds. Some of those things aren't in some guys' nature. It's a hard thing to change with some guys. They are trying hard and trying to get better at doing some of those things. Plays like that, all uncontrollable things, cost us the Western game. I thought, all-in-all, that was a big play."

On moving forward and message to the team.
"Where we're at with the season and moving forward. As we move forward, it's a quick turnaround and we'll practice tomorrow. We have to get things squared away. That's how you win. It happened last year, we were in a lot of games and next thing you know, you go from up six to down six in a nanosecond. We want to make sure to address some things why they happen and make sure they don't happen again. There's no better time than the present they say." 

Ramon Vila, R-Jr.-F
On the difference between two halves.
"We weren't really happy at halftime because they scored six points after we lost the ball, and we knew we could have been up by more. We talked to each other at half to keep it up and I don't really know what happened. They kind of went off in the second half. They started making threes, even players who don't make that many threes were making them. You can't really win a game when they score 51 points in one half. There's no way."

On moving forward as a team.
"We haven't had the easiest schedule so far in the SoCon, but we feel like we had some games we could have won. We had a team talk after the game and talked about some facts. We'll figure it out."

On what needs to improve.
"Defense. For sure. That's why we lost tonight. We did a good job in the first half, we held them to 29 points. I don't know we kind of turned off and stopped playing defense in the second half."

David Jean-Baptiste, R-Jr.-G
On what allowed ETSU to have a successful second half.
"ETSU is a great defensive team. Whenever a team gets down, the defensive intensity turns up. They did a great job of just playing defense and being who ETSU is, which is a tough defensive team. They did a great job of sticking to their game plan."