George Washington University

Jan. 18, 2003

Recap |  Final Stats

NCAA Men's Basketball
January 18, 2003

Dayton 71
GW 61

Post-Game Quotes

GW Coach Karl Hobbs:
"Dayton is a very good basketball team. They are so skilled at every position. Whenever we made a run, they had an answer for it. Whenever we made a mistake, they made us pay for it every single time. That's a veteran basketball team. They have great balance, but I'm happy with the way we played. I'm not happy with the end result, but I thought we made an important step."

"We took them out of their natural offensive flow. We wanted to speed the pace of the game up. We really wanted it to be in the 80s--an up-and-down kind of contest where we can use our quickness and athleticism. For the most part we did that. We just had some bad turnovers at bad times in the game."

"Tempo was the whole key to the game. Whenever the game got into a bit of a race, it was to our advantage. Whenever it got down where we had to run a half-court offense and make decisions with the ball, we came up short a few times."

on the crowd:
"They were absolutely fantastic. They were the ones that kept us in the game. Whenever we were flat, they got real loud. When the referees made calls, they were right on top of it. It was a beautiful crowd, maybe the best one since I've been here. I'm very confident they'll come back and support these young kids.

on Tamal Forchion:
"I wanted to be careful and not bring him back too early. He still has about five screws in his ankle. But tonight was a great opportunity. Omar [Williams] was hurt, so it forced me to put him in. I thought he responded beautifully in terms of his effort and battling those big guys on every possession. Whenever I looked out on the floor, he always seemed to be in a great defensive position."

on the limited contributions of Mike Hall and Pops Mensah-Bonsu:
"We really needed Mike to have a good scoring game, but he struggled offensively. For Pops, it was more the foul trouble. He really couldn't get into the flow of the game...He played 17 minutes, and he's a guy that usually plays 20 or 30."

on the team's injuries:
"People don't realize that we're playing with 10 scholarship players. Darnell goes down and Omar is kind of hurt, so now we're down to 8. We're battling a lot of adversity now. I'm not making that an excuse. We played our brains out tonight, and if we had taken care of the ball, got fewer calls changed the momentum, and executed our offense better, it could have been a different basketball game...The beauty of next year is that we'll have 13 scholarship basketball players...finally! Tonight we made an important small step. We're going to make more of them, and they'll turn into big steps, and then those will turn into wins."

C Tamal Forchion:
"They're a tough team. But every time I looked over my shoulder, I knew I had a teammate at my back. I knew from last year that they were going to bang. I wasn't sure how the young guys would handle it, but they stepped up to the challenge."

"It's been mentally and physically tough not to be able to play. But things are going to come around. My confidence is coming back, and I'm not really thinking about the ankle. Before, I'd be a bit hesitant, but now I can put it to the side."

Dayton Coach Oliver Purnell:
"I feel like I've been in a fight. That's the kind of game it was. It's just so tough to win a game on the road...you just see so very few people able to win on the road, so we're very pleased to get out of here with a win."

"GW came out and really fought hard. I thought they were keyed up for the game. Karl made a decision to go full-court for most of the game; I think it was a pretty good strategy because we had a tremendous advantage inside. We didn't end up getting it in there as much as we'd like. We were 6 for 8 in the first half with our big guys, and we wanted to get it in there in the 2nd half, so they increased the pressure. It was bothering us, but toward the end of the game, we were finally doing a good job of handling the pressure."

"I was happy with the way our kids fought. We weren't perfect, we can play better. But if we don't fight, we don't win this game."

"We got GW in a chase mode, and boy were they chasing. They were effective doing that, but then we finally settled down and bounced the ball to the basket, got fouls, or scored. They made a couple of great blocks, but if you keep attacking the basket like that, good things are going to happen."