East Carolina University
2-1
California
3-0
Postgame Quotes vs. Cal
November 21, 2015 | Men's Basketball
East Carolina Head Coach Jeff Lebo
On California as a team
"This is a good basketball team. They have some terrific players. We had them in a situation if we had shot it better we might have had a chance tonight because (Cal) shot it so poorly."
On the Pirates' strong effort
"I'm really proud of our guys. They took care of the ball for the most part. We got good looks against a switching man-to-man, which is hard to play against. And I think we attacked them pretty well. We got the shots we were looking for. We knew against their five-man, we had to get a lot of ball screens. We were going to get mid-range jumpers, which unfortunately in this one we didn't make enough of. We got Prince (Williams) to the mid point. We got B.J. (Tyson), that's his sweet spot. He's been struggling, but offensively we did a lot of nice things. We just didn't shoot it as well as we would have liked. On defense I think our zone bothered them. It got them out of rhythm. They made some adjustments. They had a couple offensive rebounds in the second half that really hurt us. The foul problems really hurt us. I thought we were a little tentative when guys got four fouls, and they're going to have to learn how to play physical and aggressive when they have four fouls. But Mike Zangari was really good. That's how he's going to have to play in order for us to be successful."
On Cal's rebounding
"Yeah and they got a lot of them in the second half. I thought (Ivan) Rabb got a few put backs or stick backs around the basket. You know they're not a great offensive rebounding team off the first two games, but they shot over 50 percent in those games so there wasn't a lot of offensive rebounds to be had. But we got on the floor and got a couple loose balls at the end of the game but had a couple opportunities that we couldn't chase down. I think if we got one or two of them we might have been able to score on the other end and we would have had maybe a one possession game with one minute to go."
On not turning the ball over much in the second half
"We knew they were going to switch a lot and that's hard to do offensively. You got to be a mature guy to play against that. We did a lot of slipping off the ball screens. We did a lot of quick hard movements trying to get the five-men involved with the ball screen action because their five men didn't really come out. I mean they've got size. And that (Ivan) Rabb is such an excellent shot blocker that (Mike) Zangari put some pressure on him at times because he had to come out away from the basket. We did a much better job at taking care of the ball. I mean that's number one on my list before every game. I put it up on the wall, T-C-O-B. Take care of the basketball. That's something we've struggled with early in our scrimmages and couple games but we did a much better job today."
