|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
MAUI JIM MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 25, 2015Danny ManningDevin ThomasCornelius HudsonLahaina, Maui, Hawaii WAKE FOREST - 80 UCLA - 77 THE MODERATOR: We now welcome Wake Forest to the interview room. Coach Manning, Devin Thomas, and Cornelius Hudson. We'll start with an opening statement from coach. COACH MANNING: This was a very hard-fought ballgame. I thought both teams competed very well. For us -- we lost Bryant Crawford right before tip off. He came down with the flu, and he couldn't go. We brought two guys back from suspension, Rondale Watson and Cornelius Hudson, and they played very good minutes for us today. They helped us win the ballgame. But this was just a hard-fought game. I think both teams went out there and laid it on the line. I think multiple times throughout the course of the game you had a lot of guys diving for loose balls and making multiple effort plays, and it was a fun game to be a part of. It's probably easier for me to say because we won. But I thought both teams competed very hard. Q. Devin, can you talk about going 2-1 here, two quality wins. You go home from this, how much is it going to mean this trip going 2-1 here? DEVIN THOMAS: It feels pretty good going 2-1 in such a great tournament like this. We would have loved to go 3-0, but we laid an egg yesterday against a very good Vanderbilt team. It just shows the resilience of our team bouncing back from that game yesterday and coming up with a big win today. Q. Cornelius, how did it feel to be back in the lineup today? Talk about your contribution. CORNELIUS HUDSON: I just did whatever coach asked me to do. Unfortunately we missed Bryant, our key point guard. Codi's out, so someone had to step up handling the ball, so that's what I did. Q. Just talk about the free throws and how you guys were able to use that to an advantage tonight, getting to the free-throw line, being aggressive, et cetera? DEVIN THOMAS: We were aggressive, taking advantage of the new rules that they tried to do this year. In the end, we made most of our free throws where we probably should have made more. But it was enough for us to get the win. A lot of us work on our free throws a lot after practice, especially when we're tired. So, I mean, you could tell that was the difference in the game today. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Devin. Anything else to add, Cornelius? CORNELIUS HUDSON: No. COACH MANNING: He left two down the stretch. CORNELIUS HUDSON: Yeah, I don't want to talk about that (laughing). THE MODERATOR: Okay. We won't talk about that. Questions for Coach Manning. Q. Coach, Coach Alford said he's got to study up on the new rules because 42-14 on the free-throw line, only 28-22 fouls called, but can you just talk about that? COACH MANNING: I don't know them either, apparently. I can't help you. I'm not the one to ask. Every game changes. Every game changes. It's based upon what the officials call, and some officials view certain things a foul and some don't. You just have to adjust. For us, we want to be an aggressive team and try to get the ball into the paint. I thought UCLA did a really good job in that. You look at the stat sheet, and they scored 50 points in the paint. For UCLA that's great; for us, that's terrible. We've got to do a better job of trying to stay in front of the basketball to make them shoot over us. That's a category we'd like to try to win. But getting back to your question, I don't have it figured out yet. Q. Could you talk about going 2-1 here, what that means? Two quality wins for you guys after just 13 wins last year? COACH MANNING: We're getting better. To come to this tournament and walk away with two wins is not exactly what we wanted. We stepped on this island and wanted to win the tournament. Unfortunately, for us, that didn't happen. So the next best thing for us is to come away with two wins. And I thought our guys did a great job of fighting and doing whatever they had to do to help our team be successful. Going into this game tonight, bringing back Cornelius and Rondale from suspension, I had no idea that they were going to log the minutes that they were going to play. But I also didn't know Crawford wasn't going to be available until -- we had already put the starting lineup in, and we get the -- I get the unfortunate news that he can't go. So that was a big blow, because Bryant has played really well in this tournament, and he made a big shot for us against Indiana to help us win the game. So I think that Rondale and Cornelius coming in gave us great lift. I think Mitch was solid. Mitch goes out there, and he does what he does, which is be solid, make shots, very calming influence on our team. I thought Devin played very, very hard today. Tony Parker is a load down in the paint. And Devin picked up an early foul, and I yo-yo'd him in and out, but he stayed focused. And he played exceptionally well for us. So this was just a great team win for us. We need to continue to use this momentum when we get back to North Carolina, get prepared to go play a tough Rutgers team on the road. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|