Chattanooga at VMI
Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021
Lexington, Va. - Cameron Hall
Postgame Quotes

Lamont Paris, Head Coach
On team's effort, especially on the defensive end.
"I was really disappointed in our ability to defend. I couldn't be any more disappointed to be honest with you. Even at halftime we challenged them. We gave up 37 points and were on track to give up 80, and we gave up 84. I was really disappointed in our defense in a general rule, the entire game really."

On VMI's fast offensive scheme and transitional game.
"Which is what they do. We knew that. Amazingly enough, believe it or not, even though that was a thing we were doing well, we did actually talk about that and compared our scouting report in a manner that would take away some of that. You wouldn't be able to tell that today. Some days, what are you going to do? I don't know what button to push to make them play better defense against guys who physically, you should be able to defend. There's giving up great shots and then there's giving things up in a scouting report sense. I'm frazzled by it, but what can you do?"

On quality of shot selection.
"During the normal course of the game, I thought we took a couple. I thought we had one huge one. There was one where it was a six point and game and we were on that path, I thought we had pushed that button internally. We came down and took a bad three, missed it long, they rebound it and came down and hit a three and now it's a nine-point game. I didn't think that was a demise as a whole, but there was some that were not great shots for sure."

On playing with limited roster.
"This was a little more limited than most. They run around on offense a lot which means you have to chase them a little bit on defense. Some teams don't run that much on offense. They made you fight through some stuff and exert energy to be able to do that. I'm sure that was a factor to some degree."

On moving forward after consecutive losses.
"I wouldn't be so short-sided as to call it a streak, it's two consecutive things so I guess you could call it a streak. But maybe in their minds, yeah. You can't be emotional. I hope it's the same stuff that we preached when we won nine games in a row. It was new territory to win nine games in a row so we're constantly asking what can we do to get ready for the next one. Hopefully guys have enough confidence to battle and get back to it. It's two games, it's not something I would really acknowledge. We'd rather not, but we have control over that to some degree and we didn't control that in this particular game."
 
Stefan Kenic, Sr.-F
On what went wrong today.
"We struggled defensively today. We allowed them to score 84 points which is way too much. We want to allow opponents around 65 points and that's 20 more than what we want. We struggled on screens, we didn't switch well, we didn't chase well on those screens. We struggled boxing out and allowed them to have a couple big offensive rebounds in the second half after they missed shots. That's the main reason we lost the game."
 
On moving forward.
"We can't let this disrupt us. We know what we can do. We started 9-0, we played some good teams and we know what we can do. It is tough to start the league 0-2 but we'll get back to Chattanooga and get back to working on things to make us better. We have Samford on Wednesday so we have to be ready to bounce back."
 
On limited depth off the bench.
"It is difficult because for example, we played seven players today. It also can never be an excuse, especially for this loss. It's just guys having to play more than 30 minutes, it's not an excuse and not the main reason we lost today."
 
Malachi Smith, RS-So.-G
On playing with small-numbered roster.
"It's a challenge. We can't use that as an excuse, no one cares. All that matters is that we go out there, lace them up the same way, and play hard. We've won with limited numbers before so if we lose, we can't say what we don't have. We just have to play better."
 
On VMI's play.
"They're a smart, disciplined team. We knew this was going to be a tough game coming in and we started off slow. You can't do that. We started off slow plenty of times and came back and won, but it's not going to happen every time. Today was one of those days where we started off slow and lost. We can't make it a habit of starting off slow and expecting to be able to win."
 
On moving forward after consecutive losses.
"This is going to test us. This is going to show us if we're a team that can fight or just quit. I'm confident and have faith in this team to face this adversity head-on. Just as easily as we lost these two games, we can rattle off four or five straight. We can't look ahead to what it's going to look like in two weeks, we just have to prepare for the next game and move on. Take it one game at a time."