UConn 80, DePaul 54: George Blaney’s Take

Here are some highlights of George Blaney’s post-game remarks:

“I thought it was a carry-over of the effort we gave at Syracuse.  That’s what we talked about for the past couple of days – trying to play as hard as we possibly could.  We got off to a great start, doing exactly what we wanted to do, especially offensively.  And then we got a little careless.  We started turning the ball over.  And then we missed incredibly easy shots in the first half.

“I really got on them pretty good at halftime, but all about just playing harder, and harder, and harder.  I kept pleading with them “I want to score 50 points this half, and I want to keep them under 50.”  And we came pretty close.  We scored 46 and kept them to 54. … In the second half, I thought we really ran.” 

“We had looked at DePaul a lot, and one of the things that we noticed was that the bigs could outrun [their] bigs.  We really wanted to do that, and thought we would get a number of baskets that way.  And if we did that, we thought we could then run offense a little bit easier.  I think anytime you can get breakaway layups or dunks, it makes your whole offensive system easier to run.”

“It was important to score.  It was more important to play well and to play with great effort.” 

“Andre Drummond was the runner-jumper that we all think he is.  And he’s getting to be much more physical.  And check this out:  He guarded Melvin the whole game and did a great job.  Eleven points and only four rebounds on a five for 14.  That’s a 6-11 guy playing a three man who happens to play at the four position.”

“Alex Oriakhi has been giving us such an effort, and leadership.”

“I’m liking the way [Shabazz Napier] is handling things on the floor.  He’s talking to people, he’s keeping people in the game.  Most important, he’s pushing the ball at people.  When you drive it at people, it makes people back up….If he and Ryan can push the ball so much at people, that puts them back on their heels.  It’s much easier to run offensive when they push that way.”

On coaching at least two more games … “I hope I live. If I have to work as hard as I did tonight, I am not so sure.”

“[Jim Calhoun] the best I’ve ever seen at assimilating information. His brother [Bill, a cardiologist] has been monitoring everything, and Jim will just assimilate all that, ‘here’s what we’re going to do, one, two, three …’  and break it down like that, whether its basketball or his health. … It has just taken longer this time because backs are so screwed up.”