University of North Carolina Athletics
UNC-NCCU Quotes
November 12, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 11, 2009
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UNC Head Coach Roy Williams Postgame Quotes, Nov. 11, 2009, vs. NC Central
"Well for the most part I was much more pleased than I was the other night. At the end we got a little sloppy and we were sloppy the first minute and fifty-two seconds of the second half. I think we had like three turnovers during that stretch. But I thought we were more attentive. We were just so much bigger than Levelle's team; you know, 46 to 24 on the backboards there. At times we were almost playing volleyball back there across the goal.
"But I was more pleased tonight than I was Monday night. And I think we need to have great practices. We have tomorrow off. So we need to have some great practices Friday and Saturday and get ready for Valpo.
"I think the work around the basket was good. It's hard to score against us inside with John, and Ed, and Z (Zeller). With them we really can block some shots. Our defense is getting better. We've gotta do a better job on the break. I think this will be a really good team on the break, but we're just not doing a very good job of getting spacing. And some of the turnovers are the result of us being so tight and close to each other.
"All in all, much more pleased than I was on Monday night. And again, we're just so much more gifted and particularly so much bigger than they are. It was tough for the kids to maintain concentration. They keep wanting to look at the score because they're young. I keep telling them not to look at the score, and just play the game. But again, we're satisfied with what we got. We got a lot of guys a lot of minutes. I like to look down there and see that Marcus played 23 minutes and Ed, 22, and then everyone else was below that. So that part is good."
North Carolina Central Head Coach LeVelle Moton:
"They are who we thought they were, for sure. I thought our guys came out, and I had a lot of nervous energy at the beginning of the game, not for myself, but for those guys. We had high school seniors as of last year and junior college transfers. At shoot-around, the moment they walked in, their head was at the rafters, and they're looking at the posters and the pictures. At heart, they're Carolina fans. I told them before the game, `If they beat us, let's make them beat us from the three-point line.' But in the back of my mind, I thought they would start hitting a couple of jump shots. I thought we came out well. I thought we came out with excellent intensity, and tried to execute our game plan.
"They have big bodies, and the depth began to wear us down. I think it was 20-17 and T.J. Granger picked up his third foul. Right now we're limited with our bigs, due to the injury of Lamar Pittman, who's probably my best big man. He's just coming back from a knee injury and won't be back until next week. From that point on, it was just a learning experience. I told the guys that I was proud of their effort for the first 12 minutes. The effort from that point on was completely unacceptable. I think we got rattled a little bit and started feeling sorry for ourselves. That's the transition, that's the growing pains that it's going to take. If there's a silver lining in this cloud, I guess it could be that now we have their attention.
"Now they understand, one, they're not as good as they thought they were. Two, we have to work extremely hard every second, every minute, every possession in practice to prepare ourselves for this moment. Coach Williams told me at the end of the game as we embraced, "Look, we're just too big for you. We just had too much, but I thought you guys did a heck of a job in competing.' You know, we came here to win a game. There's no moral victories. We're not happy because we played close for the first 10 minutes. We came here to win a game. That's going to be the attitude, that's going to be the culture of this program. But it's going to take a minute. You know, it's a work in progress."
