Mark Gottfried’s post-game press conference
Opening Statement
“The first thing that jumps out at me was that our defensive effort was as good as it has been in a while. I thought that was the key to the game. We had a game where we went 1-for-11 from the three. Scott Wood seemed to struggle to get in a groove, but I thought the difference was how we defended. We had active hands, we really pressured the ball well, disrupted the post–feed pass to go inside, so I thought that was the key for us tonight.”
Something you saw on defending the post
“We just talked the last couple days about being sound fundamentally. But again, being in a better stance, having active hands. Instead of getting our hands by our sides, we’ve got to be more active with everything that we do. We spent some time on that this week and I thought our guys carried that into the game.For us to become a good basketball team, that has to get better for us. Tonight was a good step in that direction.”
On the play of Richard Howell
“I thought Richard was great. You run out of adjectives for that guy. He plays so hard, he had a big-time first half and I wasn’t sure that he could have a second half like the first half, but he was really good offensively and at rebounding the basketball. He did everything he always does.”
On how big C.J. Leslie’s layup was with the score 51-49
“I thought it was a big shot. I’ll tell you another shot that I thought was big for us was Tyler Lewis’ three (10:52 mark of second half). There was a stretch where we had a couple empty possessions, were a little out of sync and Tyler’s three was huge for our team as well.”
On the early 28-14 lead
“We’re on the road and they’re going to respond. I felt they would be really competitive and come back like they did. I thought (in the first half) we played 17 minutes of great defense. Then we had three in there right towards the end where we didn’t get a rebound, they hit a three pointer, got another three pointer. But out side of that stretch I thought our defense was awfully good.”