Post-game comments from Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner, guard Josh Okogie, forward Quinton Stephens and N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried:
JOSH PASTNER
“I thought Quinton (Stephens), even though he had six rebounds – my thing always is, do your job, and Quinton’s job is he’s got to be a double-double guy for us, and even though he didn’t get the rebound numbers in double-doubles, he did a great job on keeping Zero (Abdul-Malik Abu) off the glass. Zero is as good of an offensive rebounder as there is in the country if you look at the numbers. He’s terrific, tremendous. He did a good job of keeping him neutralized on the glass. That was a good job by Quinton, and he made shots.”
“We changed up some defenses, but we played man. (N.C. State point guard) Dennis Smith is a lottery pick. I mean, he’s a pro. First half, he was high lottery, and then I felt the second half that we were better as a team guarding him. No one of our players is going to be able to stop him, so we’ve got to really be a team trying to guard him, and were a little better. He missed a couple shots in the second half there, but we changed defenses on some different occasions.”
“We’re very limited offensively. We’re extremely limited. But as we move the ball and have player movement and ball movement, that creates good shots for us on the second and third side, and we were better at that today.”
“We’ve got a long way to go. We’re the type of situation, with the schedule in front of you, in this league, you can lose 10, 12, 13 in a row. My whole thing with this team is, we’re one possession at a time. We’re nowhere (near) out of the woods. The margin for error is zero for us. We’ve just got to take it one possession at a time. But right now, at this current state, we have gotten a lot better. We’ve improved from day one and we’ve continued to get better, and the guys have had great team unity. They have great team unity and that’s why we’re playing well and moving the ball.”
JOSH OKOGIE
On scoring 27 points:
“Dang. I didn’t even know I had that many. Just, Coach (Pastner) told me to stay aggressive after the (Louisville) game last week. He just told me, I’ve got to keep being aggressive. I can’t take my foot off the pedal. That’s what I tried to do today. Every time I saw a hole, I tried to attack it and fortunately, I made plays for me and my teammates, and we were able to go ahead and get the win.”
“It just felt great seeing our offense kind of come together. We work on it every day, just repetition, repetition. We have so many options off of the same play, and it was kind of fun to see ourselves being able to execute the play. When something didn’t go right, we were able to find the next play, find the next option and then eventually we got a shot. It was kind of fun to see that.”
QUINTON STEPHENS
“It was exciting, just enjoying the moment playing. Our guys, we really wanted it. We played hard.”
“Our guys can play. We’ll let them kind of keep sleeping on us a little bit, but we’re just going to play aggressive. I think that was the main thing. We get in trouble when we’re kind of waiting for the other guy to make a move. Every guy was aggressive. Ben (Lammers), he made his shots when he was open. Josh (Okogie) was aggressive. Tadric made some key buckets for us, which were good.”
“I think we were all aggressive. I was making sure I was aggressive, and I think it really opened up the floor in a way.”
MARK GOTTFRIED
On Tech shooting 10-for-16 from 3-point range:
“I don’t want to take anything away from them, because they made shots today. But I would venture, out of the 16 they took – and I think they made 10 – out of the 16, I’d bet 12 or 13 of them, they could have tested the wind (before shooting). I mean, they had that much time to get ’em off. Whether it was against our man-to-man defense or our zone defense, it didn’t matter.
“We’d better make a decision real quick whether we’re going to guard anybody, and we’d better get tougher. I watched basket go one after another, after another, after another, right at the rim. Now, I don’t want my team to play dirty, I’m not into that at all, but at some point, I might have to put you on your back. I’m not playing dirty, I’m not into that at all, but I’m talking about being aggressive instead of watching guys get layup after layup after layup, wide-open 3 after wide-open 3 after wide-open 3.”
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