George Washington University

Dec. 29, 2001

Recap |  Box Score

Charlotte Coach Bobby Lutz

[on Jaason Smith fouling out, leaving GW with no inside presence]
"They're undersized, and they try to take advantage of that with their quickness. We wanted to establish good inside/outside balance. Certainly, getting them into foul trouble would be an added bonus, and it happened to work out that way. We felt we could go to our eight guys, while they're kind of limited in the numbers they are able to play. Especially in the post, we felt like we had a depth advantage, and we wanted to take advantage of it. It doesn't always work that way, but fortunately it did today."

[on GW's long layoff during the past three weeks while Charlotte played several games]
"It's not ideal to have that many days off, even though you can put a lot of effort into practice and prepare for your next game. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages because there's something about gaining sharpness. So I would say that yes, that was probably a slight advantage."

"The schedule we play gets us ready for tough games...GW pushed us to the limit, got the difference down to 5 [points], and that's what's really pleasing. We found a way to win against an opponent that didn't give up, and kept coming at us. And that's encouraging for the future."

GW Coach Karl Hobbs

[on being unable to sustain a second-half comeback]
"The thing that hurt us was not having Jaason [Smith] on the floor. He is truly our anchor, and it's very, very difficult to play without him. We spent a great deal of the game playing Darnell Miller at the 4 position, who would normally be our point guard. It really caused us to make some adjustments, and obviously we didn't adjust very well."

"When we're trying to run our offensive sets, Darnell, who would normally be on the ball, is setting screens. So the result is that we didn't get any fluidity in our offense, and we didn't get any offensive rebounding whatsoever....Running Darnell at the 4 spot, so we couldn't run a lot of our set plays because we didn't have a bigger inside guy to set the screens to free him up."

"Had we contained a little bit better on defense, that would've allowed us to score some baskets in transition. Our defense was not there tonight, we could not stop them from scoring baskets. In the first half, we gave up too many fouls and they took too many free throws."

[on the team's long layoff]
"I don't think it had any affect on the game. Condition-wise, I thought we looked fine....But we can't win games with our two big guys combining for six rebounds and four points."

[on the team's short bench, and finishing the game with five guards on the floor]
"My personal feelings about this basketball team is that whoever we put on the floor, that's what we've got to win with...I don't want to make any excuses, but with five guards, I still expect to win the game. The thing that hurt us more than anything else was [Charlotte G Jobey] Thomas. When we tried to make a run, he'd make two shots in a row. We make a big 3, he makes a 3 right away."

"The other thing that hurt us was Cam Stephens had a phenomenal game. That may be his career. For him to come in and get 24 points on us was huge for them. He played a fantastic game, he hurt us inside and got our big guys in foul trouble, and truly he was the difference. Even though Thomas scored 29 points, for the other guy to get 24 points and 15 rebounds...oh boy, that's tough to overcome."

"My team believes they can win every game we play. We're at a point where it makes no difference how many points we're down, we still believe we can win. The reason for that is they're so young, they don't know any better yet, and that's kind of a good thing. We have to mature a little bit. Tamal Forchion has to play like a sophomore, and not like a freshman, even though he is a freshman, we're going to have to get a little more production out of him. He can't start a game not ready to play."

[on the next game against St. Bonaventure]
When you look at what they've done, who they beat, and how they beat them, there's no doubt in my mind, they're the best team in the league. They have a terrific point guard, they have a guy who can go off against anybody and get 30, and they play with a tremendous amount of intensity. They all shoot the ball well, they spread you out, they're a difficult team to play."

[on similarities between GW and Charlotte]
"That was a terrific game for us to play. Hopefully we will learn a little bit from them. Hopefully my big guy Tamal will learn from their big guy Stephens. Hopefully my guy Collucci will learn a couple of those moves that Thomas put on him, and that's the beauty of basketball. Every game you go out and you get better, and hopefully our team will."

"In retrospect, I'm proud of our team and proud of our effort. Now that we have solved the problem of playing with intensity and effort, now we gotta solve the problem of how to do things right basketball-wise. Once we do that, we have the chance to be a terrific basketball team, and to have a special season."