COLORADO Postgame Quotes Colorado Buffaloes vs. Drexel Dragons, Coors Events Center, Boulder, Colo. (November 14, 2014)

University of Colorado Head Coach

General “Any win is a good win, and that was a good win. I looked around the country, and see who is playing who on opening night. I told bruiser before the game that I need to have my head examined for opening the year with Drexel. They’re a real team, tough team, athletic team and a good rebounding team. I thought our guys really battled and competed. There are some really good things that we can take from this, but like any opener, there are some things we can improve upon and learn from, and that’s what we’re going to do, is move forward.”

On the Change to the Starting Lineup “The starting lineup was a little unusual, but I was really proud of how those kids responded. We’re cleaning up some disciplinary things. Dom Collier is out, and he’ll be out for the Auburn game for internal reasons regardless of the status of his ankle. XJ [Xavier Johnson] and Wes [Gordon] didn’t start for internal reasons. Ski [Askia Booker] didn’t start, not because of any disciplinary things, but he’s been a little bumped up in practice. He hadn’t practiced for the last week really until yesterday. Different reasons for that lineup, but we’re cleaning that stuff up and getting it behind us. Again, I can’t really tell a difference between our first-team and second-team in practice, and tonight you can make an argument that the guys that started did a better job than the guys that came in. We have some guys that can play better than they did tonight, but the strength of this team is its depth. Josh just said it, and he’s exactly right. I was proud of TreShaun Fletcher, Jaron Hopkins and Dustin Thomas stepping up.”

On the Buffs’ Offensive Pace “I liked the pace. We want to wear teams down, there’s no question that Drexel wore down. They were starting to in the first half and in the second half, they were just gassed. When you hold a team to 29 percent [shooting] and out them by nine, you’re going to win the game. Even when you don’t shoot the ball well, which we didn’t. Looking at rebounding, we didn’t do a very good job in the first half, we were down one, but we finished plus-9. Our goal is to be plus-8 and hold them to less than 40 percent, and we did both of those things. We didn’t hit our offensive goals, but we hit our defensive ones and our rebounding ones, and won the game going away. There’s no question that our recipe works. When we have that kind of defensive intensity and the pace of the game is like that, it’s good for the Buffs.”

On the Buffs’ Shooting Woes “We missed some easy shots. In the first half, we missed some 15-foot shots that were wide open, and there’s really nothing you can do. As a coach, you want good shots. We had five bad shots in the first half and I don’t know how many we had in the second half, but there were too many blocked shots. When somebody’s blocking your shot, it’s not a good shot. If it’s a help- side defender, somebody’s open and we have to find that guy. When we share the ball and move the ball we’ll be pretty good, and we’ll have better offensive nights than we did tonight, but I was pleased overall.”

On the Play of Josh Scott “You know what you’re going to get from the guy. He’s the best big man in the country in terms of running the floor. He did a great job of running the floor tonight, he did a good job finishing and our guys looked for him. They didn’t double-team Josh, if you don’t double-team him, he’s going to get a double-double. I didn’t think he had his best night scoring from the , but I said it at the beginning of the season and I’ll say it now, I wouldn’t trade him for any big man in the country.”

On the Play of Wesley Gordon “Wesley’s a good player. He’s a good offensive player and a good defensive player. We need to get him more involved, like we’re looking for Josh, we need to look for Wesley. The strength of this team right now is inside, that’s not to say that the weakness is outside, but when you have Wesley Gordon, Josh Scott and even a guy like Tory [Miller] down there with that presence, we have to use them. Again, we can learn a lot from tonight, offensively.”

University of Colorado Student-Athletes

Josh Scott Jr., F

On Winning The Season Opener “Yeah, I think first that it’s a good feeling to open up with a win. But, I think it’s even more rewarding to know we played defense and played our style of basketball. You know it was also important because this team was a good team. Generally people play knockoff teams, and this team was tough and physical. They were in the game with us till the half. Overall it was a good game.”

On Second Half Play And Pulling Away “I think it was that we were hitting shots and getting to the line. And we started to out-rebound them. We were actually holding them to a pretty sound defensive percentage (31%) and we were tied with them on the boards at half. I think that the difference was that we got to the free throw line and outrebounded them. And we just kept playing defense. I mean they got worn down. I mean there was one point were you looked over and they were in a huddle on the free throw line, with four or five of them on their knees. So I’m going to say altitude and us pushing the pace helped as well.”

On Taking Just His Fourth Career 3-Point FG Attempt Tonight “Ive been saying it all year and summer that I’ve been working on my jump shot. And I’m not going to shoot a lot of them but if I’m open I have to shoot them. Same with open jump shots, I have to be aggressive. Like I said, one thing I didn’t do as well that I think I need to do is I need to make plays for other people. There was one play, where I got blocked where I thought I could have made a play to the corner and I didn’t. I think that’s a big deal for this team, to make plays. Because that was a good team, but we are going to play better teams that are going to make it tough to score.”

Xavier Talton Jr., G

On Winning The Season Opener “I mean it’s always nice to knock the first one out. I mean I thought they were a good team; obviously we pulled away at the end. They stuck with us for a while. We hit our defensive numbers and that’s what won us the game.”

On Being Aggressive Defensively In The Backcourt “Not necessarily, I mean it’s not a knock on this kid, but Drexel’s No.13 (G Rashann London), he was a freshmen and coach wanted us to pressure him, to test him out a little bit. I think me, ‘Ski’ (G Askia Booker), and Jaron [Hopkins] did a pretty good job pressuring him, making him speed up. That’s all that was.”

On The Defense In General “I mean we guarded. We didn’t necessarily foul as much as we did last year. There were some things I think that we could have done better. But overall I thought we had a good defensive performance.”

On Getting Josh Scott The Ball “I mean he’s one of the greatest centers in the nation. So I mean you tell me, there’s going to be a high focus to get him the ball. And we know that sometimes teams are going to double team him. And that’s when it comes to us guards being able to make plays, drive, kick or whatever. He’s a big part of our offense. We definitely need to get him the ball.”

Dustin Thomas So., G/F

On Producing In Other Ways Besides Scoring “I just wanted to show my all around game. And when the points aren’t coming, I know I’ve got other players that can make plays for me. I just need to get the ball to them and that’s what I was trying to do.”

On Playing In The New Offensive System “We enjoy it. We enjoy sharing the ball with each other. We enjoy attacking. We enjoy just getting out there and playing basketball, and I think that’s what it allows us to do.”

Drexel Head Coach James Flint

On The Second Half “It was the same line up for the second half, but they (Colorado) did a better job. We didn’t finish plays to start the second half and they did. So, they got the lead a little bit and put us on our heads. I thought we did a good job keeping them out of transition. In the second half, I thought we missed a couple of shots that got them into transition a little bit. That’s why they got the lead on us.”

On The High Number of Fouls “You have to play the game. They’re not going to stop you because a guy got into foul trouble or anything like that. I give them credit. They took advantage of the things. As the game started going on, I thought [CU F] Josh Scott really got into it. They started getting into him and he started scoring on us, getting some action. I thought we did a good job before that. But, it goes back to starting the second half. We had some looks and we had some drives but we didn’t finish them. They got them in transition and Colorado got the lead on us.”

On His Young Team “We have a lot of young guys out there, and I thought that at big moments in the game we didn’t make good plays. We had them to nine, we charged. We came out of a time out and talked about inside-out play. We shot a bomb three. Those types of things when you’re playing with a young group who are inexperienced, those things happen. [Drexel G] Damion [Lee] tried to press a little bit but we told him that he had to finish plays, just pull up his shots. But, he was missing. Those are the types of things you learn that we can hopefully get better with it. I feel that we didn’t have a great effort defensively in spurts in the second half. That killed us a little bit too. But, we had a lot of freshman out there and those things happen. We just have to learn from it and get better. This is the first game of the year. Hopefully we’ll get better as the year goes on.”

-COLORADO-