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EA SPORTS MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 25, 2013Andre HollinsRichard PitinoMalik SmithLAHAINA, HAWAII Syracuse – 75 THE MODERATOR: We have Coach Richard Pitino and Andre Hollins and Malik Smith. Coach Pitino, opening comments? COACH PITINO: Certainly a hard‑fought loss, but I'm very, very proud of our team. I thought today and I told them this, when you're building a program and you're at the early, early stages you want to show you're going to compete on every single possession. Our guys did that tonight. Tough game to be undermanned with Walker and Elliott in foul trouble. We just had to make it work. When Mo gets back, that's going to be a big help for us. But very proud of these guys. They really fought hard and showed, I think, that hopefully we're not going to be an easy out night in and night out. Q. Andre, or both of you guys really, how are you thinking generally pretty satisfied with how you were able to attack the Syracuse zone tonight? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, going in we prepared well for it. You know, we had Coach prepared us for it and we had some lapses where the games got stagnant, and I think we handled that well. It just came to a few plays. We knew we had that game. Like Coach said, we fought really hard. We played every possession hard, satisfied with the effort. Just got to tighten up the little things. Q. Malik, can you talk a little bit about there is a certain point in the game there where you had a steal lay‑up and you got kind of excited. The toughness factor of this team no matter what the circumstance? Can you talk about that a little bit? MALIK SMITH: We just tried to compete night in and night out like Coach says. Tried to work hard every day and tried to transfer that over to the games. We were just trying to do anything possible to win. Q. Coming into the game, a lot of people counted you guys out and said you were huge underdogs. At what point did you feel like, okay, we can hang with this team? It seemed like at some point in the second half there, it was a two‑point game late in the game you felt like you could pull it out. STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Before the game even started we don't come in thinking we're going to lose. Doesn't matter what others think. We're going to come in extremely confident and it's a game. We come in and play. We prepared well, and it was a good game. Q. For either of you guys again, just watching the big guys, Elliott and Joey King especially battling against that front court, just effort that they put forth. On your end, how did you guys appreciate that? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: It was tough. Those guys are big. The Syracuse bigs are really big. It's hard to simulate their length in practice and we wouldn't have been in the game without those guys. Elliott, Oto and those guys in there banging, we wouldn't have been in there without them. So we really appreciate their effort. Q. Joey King didn't play the last game. He had the jaw injury. Just talk about his toughness out there? There was a point where he was on the floor almost every other play, but he kept bouncing back up and playing hard. STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Yeah, I think Joey King is the epitome of what this program is about, his toughness, his fractured jaw, he came in and played his heart out. Started out the game really well. Hit some big shots for us and competed. That's what we're about. We're going to play hard every possession, and that's the type of player he is. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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