Syracuse-Michigan State Postgame Quotes
2/23/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 23, 2003
Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim:
"I thought in the first half, we played as well offensively, really better than we have all year. Michigan State is a great defensive team. We had a lot of balance and a lot of movement. I thought we just did a great job in the first half. In the second half, we kind of hung on. On offense, we struggled. We couldn't get the things done that we wanted in the second half. We just couldn't find (Chris) Hill on defense. We try to pride ourselves on being able to stop one guy, but we couldn't find him enough. He just kept making them. I think it got to where they were just looking for him. If we would have just found him a little bit more, I think we could have had some success. But they did a good job of getting it inside, attacking us, and then getting it back outside. We just didn't do a good job of finding Hill, especially when it was 76-70. We should never have let him have that shot. Somebody else should have shot that ball. You got to give him a lot of credit, he had it going today...."
Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo:
"Well, I think that is kind of the way the year has gone for us, except I thought we played about as hard as we could have played and as well as we could have played. We put in a lot of new things this week for that zone. I thought we got the shots we needed to get. Chris Hill had an incredible day. It is so disappointing to see him have a day like that not be able to feel as good as he should feel. He did a pretty good job defensively and a very good job not only shooting it, but running our team."
"We just made some mistakes inside, we gave them those dunks and those lobs and plays that we have gone over. Far too many mistakes against a good team are going to cost you. You have to give credit to Syracuse because we made some runs and it answered with runs. That's what a great team does, especially on the road."
"It was a game I think we could've won, not saying we should have, but I think we could have. It was a disappointing and heartbreaking loss, yet I can't blame my team for how we played."