Post Game Quotes

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2007 ACC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
GAME 6: #12 Miami v. #5 Boston College

MIAMI Quotes

Frank Haith
Obviously it was a well-played game, a hard-fought game. Give Boston College a lot of credit. They never stopped playing. Rice was incredible. He made every big shot. They made the plays they needed to make to win the game.

On Tyrese Rice:
He got in a rhythm early in the ballgame and he just got going. He’s got such great pace to his game. He keeps you off balance, and when he’s making his three-ball, like he did today, it makes him very tough. You’ve got to respect his ability to get in the paint area and we want the hard edge on the ball screens on him, but he had such great patience with his ball handling, that he was able to – once we rotated back – just to penetrate us. We were trying to be more aggressive with him in the second half and not let him rock us back on our heels, because he was in such a rhythm shooting the ball. But he had one of those performances today that is tough to guard.

On the last shot in overtime:
Obviously we had lost Jimmy (Graham), but we wanted our wings across, and we wanted to throw the ball to Ray (Hicks) and try to hit one of our wings because we needed a three. We wanted to tip it out to one of our guys for a three-point shot. (James) Dews probably should have shot it when he got it; he ended up passing it to Anthony (Harris). But it was a little bit too late.

On the second-half matchup with Dudley:
It was a little bit tougher for us because we had to put one of our perimeter guys on him. I thought early in the game with Jimmy (Graham) and Keaton (Copeland) and Ray Hicks guarding Dudley it was a little bit better in terms of physical guys on Jared. I didn’t think Brian (Asbury) did that bad a job, other than Jared got loose on some offensive rebound stick-backs. And that’s where he hurt us – he really hurt us on the offensive glass.

On Miami’s performance in the tournament:
I’m really proud of these guys and we’ve gone through so much in terms of losing guys through suspensions, through injuries and this ball club has found a way, even in the last month of the season, we’ve really been playing well. We haven’t always won, but we’ve started to play better. I think if you look at our ball club, we have a lot of young talent. A lot of freshmen and sophomores. I’ve got to believe if we continue to build on what we did in this tournament and in the last month of the season, we could have a special team. It’s going to take our guys continuing to work, but I do like our team.

Jack McClinton
On his turnover with five seconds remaining (in OT):
I had a pretty good look, I knew it wasn’t going to be a perfect look. But I got enough space and I just missed it.We drew up a play. That’s what the play was, and we had the open look. We took it, but it didn’t fall.

On the season coming to an end:
It’s a real bad feeling to end our year like this. But on a positive note, we made progress during the end of the season and we can carry it on to next year.

BOSTON COLLEGE Coaches Quotes

Al Skinner
On Miami’s effort:
Considering they had a great game yesterday, it looked like they hadn’t stopped playing. They made some great shots, they played extremely hard. One of the things that I’m pleased about is I thought they rebounded the ball extremely well against Maryland. I thought we did a decent job on the back boards this evening, but still with their execution on the offensive end, I think they got the shots that they wanted. We were just real fortunate to win, but I thought they played a real fine ball game. It’s probably the best ball game they played against us all year long.

On Jared Dudley’s importance to the team:
The fact of the matter is Tyrese has done this all season long. Again, Jared gets most of the recognition and rightfully so, but he’s carried us. There’s been a number of games where he’s done this before – this is not the first time. He’s starting to get a feel for when to and when not to, and we talk about when he doesn’t need to attack the basket early in the shot clock. He can afford to be patient late in the shot clock, it’s much more to his advantage to do it then and it really helps the team, and he’s starting to balance that. The one thing he didn’t do tonight that I thought he could have done a better job with is we could have pushed the ball a little bit more, that he kind of held it back. But I’m not going to force him to do something that he’s not comfortable with doing, and he’s really starting to understand what it’s going to take for us to be successful and he did a fine job this evening.

On freeing up Jared Dudley:
I think what people are kind of missing here is that we’re playing Jared (Dudley) a little out of position when we made this change, so the offense is different from the position he’s playing now than what he’s been playing all season long. A credit to him, he doesn’t get frustrated with it, but it’s definitely not the same as it was earlier in the season. He’s made the sacrifice in trying to make the adjustment and as he says still try to be a team player, so I’m real happy with him, happy with his play, his attitude. Yes, I’d like him to do more but he’s trying to do the things we need him to do to help us be a better team.

BOSTON COLLEGE Players Quotes

Jared Dudley
On University of Miami’s defense against Dudley:
I think the new thing, what people are starting to do, is trying put their power forward on me, putting someone bigger and physical. They’re just trying to bang, just trying to wear me down. Obviously I play a lot of minutes, I just miss a lot of shots especially during the game. I’m pushing a lot of guys off with momentum if I hit a couple of shots, then I can get it going. I’m a guy that likes to force a lot of shots, sometimes they double sometimes they don’t. Oates hit some big shots early on to kind of open them up and just kept battling. We’ve been struggling here lately, losing four out of our last five, but this team just needs a little confidence and hopefully this will get us over the hump.

On missed free throws in previous game against North Carolina:
I don’t think about it, I was just disappointed in my effort because I had the opportunity to tie the ball game. When I go out and play North Carolina I’m playing that game, I’m not thinking back at Conte Forum when we had a chance to win. Right here this is the ACC Tournament, my last go-around right now, and I didn’t play extremely well today but I got the win and that’s all that matters. You could throw stats out when it comes to me, I’m all about just winning and we lived to play another day.

Tyrese Rice
On University of Miami’s strong start:
I think they played pretty good defense on Jared today, and he had a couple of shots that he passed up, but I just felt like I needed to step it up a little bit on the offensive end.

On late three-pointer:
When I shot I thought it was going straight in, but when it hit the front rim I pretty much knew it was going to fall.

On point of stepping up play:
It was a little in the second half, we were kind of down on defense, kind of down on offense, weren’t really scoring the way we could and I just felt like I needed to create a little bit more for my team and it worked out.