Postgame Quotes
January 02, 2016 | Men's Basketball
POSTGAME QUOTES
Washington 96, UCLA 93 (2 OT)
Seattle, Wash. (Alaska Airlines Arena)
January 1, 2016
UCLA head coach Steve Alford
on his initial thoughts on the game
“I thought we had really settled in and had done a good job defensively in the first half. But, we just had too many turnovers tonight – 25 turnovers is way too many for us. I like the way that we battled in the second half after we got down. We did a good job coming back. This league is going to be tough. There are going to be a lot of games like this all year. We just didn't have enough guys making enough plays. We missed probably 15 shots from two feet and in. That's learning to concentrate on the road. We've got to figure out how to do that.”
on UCLA trying to find a rhythm offensively when many fouls are being called
“There were a lot [of fouls], and you've got to adjust and be able to handle that. We didn't handle that very well. I was upset with our offense in the first half. And then I was really upset with our defense in the second half. We've got to be able to put together multiple halves of really good offense with really good defense, and we didn't get that. When you're on the road, it's hard to win when you're good at one end and not the other.”
on what his postgame message was to the team
“I know how hard they've worked. For whatever reason, our concentration and being able to make simple plays and shots in the first half was really bad. Because of that, it puts a lot of pressure on the defense in the second half, and we weren't able to get it done. We just couldn't get the stops that we needed to get. You'll have to learn that lesson quickly, because we have a quick turnaround. The pressure is on us, now. We have to go to Washington State. It's going to be a league like this. You see that Utah lost at Stanford tonight. It's going to be [tough] every night on the road. It's going to be a difficult deal. It was for us tonight. We had our chances. We just didn't make enough plays to get it done.”
