Post-game comments from Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner and Pittsburgh coach Kevin Stallings following the Yellow Jackets’ 61-52 win Tuesday night at McCamish Pavilion.
Josh Pastner
“Josh Okogie, he had seven 50-50 (ball) wins. He was terrific. He saved us the first half. His 50-50 wins, he was awesome. I love Josh. He’s continued to get better.”
“Quinton Stephens didn’t have a good first half. Zero rebounds, zero (actually two) assists. I told him at halftime, I said, ‘Keep playing like this, let me tell you this – about 10 years down the road, you’re going to look back and be sick to your stomach every day with the pang of regret. So don’t you leave this court playing like you’re playing.’ And, boy, did he come through for us the second half. Really was so critical for us to win the game. Quinton was big. I’m just so proud of the seniors and I have such appreciation and gratitude, which is genuinely sincere from my gut, on our young men, on those seniors for how much they’ve embraced me and I can’t say enough about them. I’m really happy that we were able to get that win on senior day for our seniors.”
“I thought we were very tired in the North Carolina State game. I mixed up our routine so we didn’t have film last night. I did literally 10 minutes worth of shootaround today. Practice yesterday was probably 30 minutes. I just tried to have us as fresh as possible after the Notre Dame game. The game ended at 8:30, we left the arena at 9:05 because I wanted to get them back and just try to have some recovery. Those quick turnarounds are not easy.”
“I thought Sylvester (Ogbonda) gave us good minutes and allowed Ben (Lammers) to get a five-minute rest in there. It was actually longer because of the timeout. He was able to rest and he was actually probably a little fresher late, and he really came through for us late, hit some big shots, had the big elbow shot. So I thought Sylvester gave us some good minutes.”
Kevin Stallings
“We had some breakdowns defensively and Lammers kind of took the game over there at the end and had his way. It’s a little bit of a similar script for us. We can play most people competitively and then get to the end and we don’t execute well enough to get the job done, and that’s on both ends. It’s’ not just offensively, it’s defensive, as well.”
“There are times when we lack coachability. But we’ve got some guys that are trying really hard. We have some guys trying really hard. We need to do a better job of doing what we’re doing and executing what we’re asked to do.
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