Western Carolina 56, Chattanooga 48
Chattanooga, Tenn. | The McKenzie Arena
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Postgame Quotes
 
HEAD COACH SHAWN POPPIE
Opening Statement
"Frustrating day, obviously, on our side. Off to a slow start and kind of continued on. We can never kind of get over the hump I thought we got within one maybe and then two. Just frustrating mistakes. They got to back to six and then kind of was the same story never could get it back after that. Frustrating. Hats off to Western. They came in here and in competed and took advantage of us not not being here today."
 
On having possibly their best game Thursday and not the best game today
"I just told them that they're scared to be great. And what I mean by that is once we get to that point where we can really kind of get this thing rolling, we're scared of the moment and then we look for somebody else to do it. We gotta keep being us and but we're not talented enough just to show up. That was, kind of, the message in the locker room. We've mentioned that the last few days. How are we going to handle success when we have an opportunity right now to take full advantage of this thing and instead it looked today like we showed up and looked for everybody else to try to do it and we're not talented enough to do that."
 
On what the plan is going forward
"I wish I had an answer. We're 22 games in and we're fighting the same thing. I get it. It's part of a process of winning mentality. I mean, we got two seniors I just challenged them in there. Guys we have eight guaranteed games left and we're dealing with the same issues when things like today happen. There's only so many 'come on guys' that we can do. Right? It's got to be direct. We got to change. 'I was wrong', 'you're wrong'. 'How do we fix it?' and have a little urgency to us instead of looking around and hoping somebody changes it. That's kind of what happens when we struggle it's we look over the shoulder to see who can go fix it for us and then what turns into is, is that, what you saw."
 
On defensive struggle today
"We allow them to shoot 60% That's kind of what we hang our hat on is on the defensive side of the ball. There's certain times they may come in and adjust and there are some things we weren't prepared for. They ran a four out one in high ball screen or wing ball screen for 40 minutes. We do that drill every single day. We changed the coverage up a handful of times, but it was just we did not focus and didn't have simple rotations that we've been doing for like I said 22 games so that part is very frustrating. I know we forced 30 turnovers. It kind of goes back to the offensive side again. Shoot 35% It's hard to win basketball games. We got to find a way to score more consistently if we're gonna have a chance to get where I think this team is capable of getting to."