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Nov. 19, 2004

Notre Dame vs. Harvard

November 19, 2004

Mike Brey Quotes

On the game…

“I think we have to give a lot of credit to Harvard. They played a great second half of the game. I think we played a good game in the first half, but we didn’t do much offensively in the second half. We were fortunate to win the game.”

On playing under pressure…

“Chris [Thomas] and Chris [Quinn] are pretty fearless guys. It doesn’t matter whether we’re playing Harvard or Syracuse, but it’s going to come down to Quinn and Thomas. Some other guys did make some nice plays, like Jordan Cornette and Dennis Latimore. We had some really good looks, especially Colin Falls. We were in a position to make a break, but we got discouraged. I think we hung our heads a bit.”

On the team… “You need maturity when you’re up 16 or up 12 and things are going well. I think that’s very important. We still need to work on that, and we’ll start tomorrow.”

On Harvard…

“If you’re down 16 at half, you’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve been in positions on the road like that, and we’ve come flying back. During that 12-2 Harvard run, I didn’t want to call a timeout. I wanted to see if the guys could get out of it, and that was a mistake on my part. I should have shut it down like I would have in a BIG EAST game.”

On playing a close game… “This season, we’re going to be in 20 situations like that, maybe more. Now we have some experience being down, and we can use that.”

Notre Dame Player Quotes

Senior Guard Chris Thomas

On Harvard…

“Coach said every team has good players. If you give a team the chance to get back in the game, they are going to do it, especially a team like Harvard. They have smart guys and good players. Stehle and their big man, Cusworth, are talented.”

On Harvard’s second half comeback…

“It was like we didn’t even know what happened, with buckets or on the boards. Their guards were shooting lay-ups. At least we could have made it a little harder on them to make some shots. We kind of got complacent. We started worrying about our shots a little bit and we got in foul trouble and got them on the line. Those little things and them going on a 10-0 run deflated us.”

On the play of the Irish…

“We did some good things, especially in the first half. We had our hands on the ball and we played above the rim. We had a great spurt in there. Guys off the bench gave us great minutes, too.”

Junior Guard Chris Quinn

On Notre Dame’s play in the second half…

“We just came out really flat and they made a run on us. I think after that first half we thought it might come easy for us, and that was not the case. We need to go out there and play hard at both ends of the court for two halves.”

On what’s next…

“We play again on Tuesday and we have to learn from this experience. We’ll get back in here and watch some tape and move on, but we have to know that once we have a team down we have to keep on playing like it’s a tie ball game.”

Senior Forward Dennis Latimore

On his role on the team…

“I am just trying to go out there and play hard – put up some points and grab some rebounds. I am just a lot happier than I have been in my past seasons of college basketball. Coach Brey is giving me the opportunity to have a lot of minutes and just to go out there and show what I can do.”

Harvard Coach Frank Sullivan Quotes

On Harvard’s performance…

“We knew if they made their threes or they got any kind of run on us then we would be in trouble. On our defensive rebounding, we shoot for 70 percent, and we got that tonight.”

On Notre Dame points scored off turnovers…

“We shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers. Fifteen of our turnovers were steals by Notre Dame. We had poor perimeter passing. The possessions and the extra points that we negated by controlling their three point percentages, we gave back to them on turnovers.”

On matching up against Notre Dame’s big men…

“As much as people have talked about Cusworth, this is really his first college start. Stehle broke his nose two days ago. He’s practiced with us once. He had a bad back and I gave him two days off and then he broke his nose, so he really hasn’t practiced much. The two kids are good players, but given the circumstances, I didn’t know how we would be able to handle these guys.”

On Notre Dame’s Chris Quinn…

“We knew we were going to be up against one of the best players in the nation. One thing that we weren’t able to see on tapes or in stats is if a kid has hands, and that kid has great hands.”

Harvard Player Quotes

Senior Guard David Giovacchini

On the post- halftime strategy…

“We were turning it over way too much and giving Notre Dame too many easy baskets. So we decided to come out with a lot of energy and cut down on the turnovers. We wanted to make some more defensive rebounds so we could limit their possessions. That got us back in the game.”

On what the game proved…

“We knew that these guys are really talented. We’ve improved since last year though and felt like we could give them a good game tonight. I think we proved something tonight. The game was tied with 5 minutes left, and they’re ranked 21st, so we were excited.”

On the end of the game…

“Notre Dame got a few offensive rebounds and was able to dry up the clock towards the end of the game. We didn’t end up getting any good shots, so we lost the game in the last few minutes.”

Senior Forward Graham Beatty

On Harvard’s strategy…

“We tried to contain the point and shooting guards. Our big guys stepped up and made sure we controlled the lanes. We got a lot of defensive rebounds which made a difference.”

On the importance of this game…

“We didn’t win, which was unfortunate, but we definitely proved that we can play with these guys. Now we’re going to go back east and tear it up out there.”

Junior Forward Matt Stehle

On Harvard’s second half defense…

“Our defense in the second half was much improved. We went over some stuff at halftime that was giving us trouble, but it was more that we picked up our intensity.”