University of Richmond Athletics
Men's Basketball Post-Game Quotes
02/12/2006 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 12, 2006
Richmond Coach Chris Mooney
On Richmond's Offensive Struggles
"Our offense struggled today, even when we cut it to 11 we had a lay-up and we missed it. Our margin for error is so slim. We can't afford to not capitalize on opportunities."
On St. Bonaventure Dictating The Tempo
"St. Bonaventure really wants to get out and go. We usually have been better about limiting the other team's transition game, but we probably did our worst job of the season on that today. St. Bonaventure had control of the game, they made us play the way they wanted to."
On Being Short-Handed
"I would like to think that fatigue is not an issue, but from the outside looking in it definitely must look like that. I hope that's not the problem, but that could have something to do with it. We have only 10 guys on the team, eight guys play minutes and five play a lot of minutes."
On St. Bonaventure's Ahmad Smith
"He is a great player. He's tough to defend because he is so crafty with the ball. He really knows how to get the ball into the paint and he used a variety of different shots to score. He was very impressive today."
On Richmond's Defense
"We're just not playing defense at the level we need to play. We are not a great shooting team and not a great ball-handing, so we have to rely heavily on our defense. We are the same team that held Louisville to 53 points at Freedom Hall. We can play defense, but we're struggling to get back to that point."
More On The Defense
"We gave up too many easy buckets. We can't let a team shoot 55 percent against us. We have to do a better job on the defensive end, that's how we are going to win games."
More On The Defense
"In the first half I thought our half-court defense was good, they just got some transition baskets and points off turnovers. In the second half we just can't keep our body in front of our man. We have one terrific defender on this team in Gaston (Moliva), the other guys have to defend harder."
On Richmond's Scoring Struggles
"If we decided we wanted to go out and try to score 80 every night, that would be hard. We have some ball-handling issues, we have some shooting issues and we have some passing issues. If we try to outscore the other team that would be difficult for us. The best way for us to win is to defend. I know we haven't done that the last two games."
On Being Fatigued
"We are trying to play a half-court game, the problem starts when it is so much of a chore to get the ball over half court. Most teams don't have trouble getting the ball over half court, but we expend so much energy just to get into our offense."
On Getting The Players Rest
"We've got to go out tomorrow and practice with the same 10 guys and same eight that play so many minutes. It's difficult to get them a rest right now. We play again Wednesday."
Richmond Senior Kevin Steenberge
On What Is Wrong With Richmond's Defense
"We've had games where we have played such good defense and right now we are playing lousy defense. Some of it might be that other teams are figuring out what we're doing, but most of it is on us. We're not playing as aggressive as we should be and as aggressive as we were."
On Richmond Possibly Wearing Down
"We might be breaking down a little bit both mentally and physically. Someone like Peter (Thomas) has never played this type of role at the college level before. We're just trying to stay as physically fresh as we can. We may have slipped a bit, but hopefully we can pick it back up."
On Richmond's Full-Court Pressure In the Second Half
"A lot of us are used to pressing and that's something that could be very effective for us. That's a new press that we didn't put in that long ago and it worked well tonight. Hopefully that is something we can use down the stretch here, especially come Atlantic 10 Tournament time."
