ECU American Athletic Conference Championship First Round Quotes
March 12, 2015 | Men's Basketball
ECU Head Coach Jeff Lebo
Opening statement
"Well it was a heck of a basketball game to open the tournament. Good offensive game, a lot of points and we had a great start to the game, up 17, and give Central Florida a lot of credit, they really battled hard and battled back, and I give my team a lot of credit in the overtime when a team comes back like that and ties the game, a lot of times in those overtimes they mentally have an advantage and physically have an advantage, and we had -- showed some toughness coming down the stretch and made some key plays.
"It's exciting to be able to play another day. It's our first American tournament victory and I know our guys are excited to get a chance to play again tomorrow against a terrific team."
On the play of Lance Tejada in the first half and the importance of having Antonio Robinson on the floor in the second half
"It was important for us defensively. I thought Lance was terrific. He's a freshman that's been up and down, his first tournament in this stage and he comes in, has eight assists in this game and really calmed us down when we had two fouls from Antonio. You like to have your senior out there at the end of the game, the guy's been through the wars, but really credit Lance really in that first half for giving us a big boost. Our bench was terrific. Terry Whisnant didn't have a great game by any stretch and Caleb White struggled. Our bench was really the big difference, especially our backcourt, they were terrific.
On UCF's interior play
"There are some big bodies. McBride was terrific. When he catches it in there, it's hard to get around him. When he catches it in there, he has great hands and skills, but we had a lot of fouls on him in there. I thought that Nzege got around him. When we played at the five, we had a key steal late in the game where we got around him and Paris came up from the back side and got a key stop in there. But he's a load in there. And they shot it well from 3. They've been struggling, shooting the ball from 3 and they made 9 of 22. Their penetration hurt us from the guard spots also. They got off the ball screens a little bit and got into the painted area, but they made some -- we couldn't stop them the second half. They shot 61 percent the second half. So give them credit. They're an offensive team that when they get going on a roll, they're hard to stop."
Freshman B.J. Tyson
On playing in his first college tournament
"Well, I was just excited to be here because it's my first time playing in American Conference or any like college basketball tournament. I was excited. I really wasn't nervous. You know, just like we took it the next as a new game so I just came in with the same mentality that I always had all year and I just play."
Redshirt sophomore Marshall Guilmette
On the development of his 3-point shooting
"Developing the shot takes a lot of work, a lot of times, there's no way around that. Picking my times, I want to help displace the floor, we have great shooters on our team like Terry and Caleb, so I'm not looking to get 10 3s up a game but when I get an open look, I think its something that helps opens up our offense."
