Nov. 1, 2011

Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery

Notre Dame Men’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Saint Xavier University
November 1, 2011
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center-Notre Dame, Ind.

Head Coach Mike Brey

On St. Xavier’s play…
“I thought that was a good team for us to play. They’re older, they play together and they really run their stuff. They really challenged us, and we couldn’t guard them sometimes. We weren’t very good defensively at times, and we had some good possessions. It was a good learning tape for us.”

On what tonight revealed about his players…
“As you can see, we’re really trying to evaluate our group. You learned some more tonight. I was really pleased with Jack [Cooley], with his start playing 23 minutes. I think he maybe could have played more. I was pleased with Eric Atkins for the most part. I think we have to work with him defensively. As far as running our team and finding ways to score, he’s going to need to do that. Certainly, (Tim) Abromaitis, I hope our fans realize he’s just a beautiful basketball player to watch. He’s one of the best players in the country. Enjoy it, man. He was a rock for us tonight. With young guys running all over the place at times, he kind of steadied us.”

On how to proceed from this game…
“Even here with older teams sometimes, we look better offensively than we do defensively. What’s best for us? How are we going to guard the ball screen? How much zone are we going to play is something I think we need to talk about. We could be playing it more this year especially because we’ve got some guys who need to stay on the floor a little longer and not get in foul trouble.”

On expectations for this season…
“I think we are young. With Jerian [Grant] and Alex [Dragicevich] one of the things we’ve talked about and it’s not any different at times in practice is if they don’t have success offensively early, they can’t get distracted on the other end. I think most young players do that. That’s a thing with young players who are talented offensively. They can get distracted. I think both of them did that, and we’ve got to keep working with them. I was talking to my assistant and said we’ve got to get them better, and he said, ‘You know, you said the same thing about Abro(maitis) in his second year.’ That’s a good point. So we’ve got to keep working with them.”

Notre Dame Men’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Saint Xavier University
November 1, 2011
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center-Notre Dame, Ind.

Notre Dame Players Quotes

Pat Connaughton-Freshman-Guard

On playing his first game…
“I thought it was great to get a feel for it, to play with the guys. It’s nice to play another team and not just beat each other up.”

On getting comfortable in the game…
“I felt comfortable almost right away. The guys are really encouraging, especially Eric [Atkins] and Tim [Abromaitis]. They were probably the most encouraging. With that, I was able to feel comfortable after the first possession.”

On showing more confidence in the second half…
“Things I could control, the hustle, the rebounds, made me feel more comfortable. Then I felt I was playing my game and could help the team win.”

On his feelings of the team…
“Tonight was the first time this group has played against a different team. As coach has said plenty of times, we were just trying to get a feel for each other and find our chemistry.”

Tim Abromaitis-Graduate Student-Forward

On young players in the line-up…
“I think sometimes that’s what it’s going to come down to, but I think at the same time other guys are good at creating. Eric [Atkins] is good at the pick-and-roll. I think something we could have done a lot more today was getting into the post. Jack’s definitely improved in there and has shown that he has a couple of moves. He’s someone we can go to when we need a bucket.”

On his take of the game…
“It was good to move against a different team, to see a different offense. We saw a lot of screens, and movement off that ball that we haven’t practiced with or played against. Just getting a feel for who can do what out there and evaluating that. Overall, I think we did pretty well on offense. We definitely let up a little bit more than we wanted to on defense.”

On moving guys in and out of the game…
“I think defensive chemistry is definitely something that builds over time. We need to do a little better job communicating and figuring out ball screens. They were able to get into the lane. It seemed like they had a lot of five footers that came off ball screens so it’s something that we definitely have to work at. I think it will come in time.”

Eric Atkins-Sophomore-Guard

On feeling the rust falling off…
“Yes, especially in the second half. I think that is the team you’re going to see more of. We worked the ball a little bit better, got out in transition, and got Abromaitis open shots.”

On the less experienced teammates…
“I think they played great. Pat Connaughton played great today. He knocked down open jump shots and played good on the defensive end. He also got a lot of rebounds for us. [Alex] Dragicevich played well, and Jerian [Grant] looks anxious, but he’s just going to blow it up one of these games.”

On getting what you wanted to out of the first game…
“Overall, I would say so. First of all, we won the game. Second, assist to turnovers was the way we wanted it. Also, we rebounded the way we wanted to. I would say that we accomplished what we wanted.”

On having a voice on the court…
“Coach talked to me after Tory [Jackson] came back. Tory [Jackson] was out there yelling and screaming, and pulled me over after practice and told me that is the voice we need. I have to carry that over and work on it every single practice. You did see that on the pass play to [Alex] Dragicevich.”

On developing the voice…
“Yes, that’s not really in my nature, being a loud, screaming guy. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to be the leader of this team.”

Jack Cooley-Junioro Forward

On what you learned as a team today…
“I learned that we have some things we need to work on, but we played well for the first time. With this group, we have four new people in starting spots, and that was pretty good. I think playing against anyone for the first time as a team is a pretty good feat to come out with a win.”

On what you have to work on…
“There are just some things that will come with time and playing together, like getting the jitters out. I know we’ll be fine by next game. We just need to work on a couple things, and now we know what we have to work on. It will just come with time.”

On rebounding…
“We were trying out a lot of different defenses that were hard to rebound out of, and that is one of the things we’re working on this year. We just have to figure out rotation, and it will come with time. It is still just our first time playing together. Rebounding is a team thing, so when we build our cohesiveness as a team, rebounding will come with it.”

On rotating so many people in…
“This game was pretty chaotic, with it being the first time playing together, and with all the rotations and everyone else getting thrown in there. I think everyone did pretty well considering that you would go in for 4 minutes, come out for 2 minutes, and then go back in. It was pretty good, and good to see.”

Notre Dame Men’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Saint Xavier University
November 1, 2011
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center-Notre Dame, Ind.

St. Xavier Head Coach Tom O’Malley

On playing at Notre Dame…
“Well we were happy to be here, first of all. I want to thank Coach Brey for giving us that opportunity. I think this game is going to do us a world of good, to be able to come in here, and at least compete to a certain extent against a very good team.”

On the play of sophomore guard Brad Karp…
“Brad is a guy who just doesn’t stop. He keeps going and he’s a great player for us. He does a lot of things well, although I thought he didn’t particularly have a good game by his standards. That’s hard to say when he was our leading scorer tonight, but Brad is a very capable player. I also thought [Roosevelt] Green did a pretty good job by making a couple of quick transition moves. As I look at our overall play, we were very happy to be able to come in here and compete for most of the game.”

On how tonight’s exhibition game will help his team this season…
“As I mentioned to our kids in the locker room, this is only something that can make us go forward with a lot more intensity because we realized a couple of things we didn’t do well, and we can try to improve on them. If you look at the game, there was an awful lot of free throws, but I said to our guys don’t blame the referees because those were all fouls. The offensive rebounding was a big factor in the first half, and something we need to correct moving forward.”

Notre Dame Men’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. St. Xavier University
November 1, 2011
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center-Notre Dame, Ind.

St. Xavier Players

Brad Karp – Sophomore – Guard

On playing against Notre Dame…
“It was a lot of fun playing out here. There was a great atmosphere. We got off to a bit of a slow start, but it was just a great experience to play here. I think that Notre Dame is a great team. We came in thinking that they were going to run a lot more zone. We had to do a better job of boxing out.”

On their preparation for tonight’s game…
“Yesterday we came over here after classes and had a shoot around. We went back and got some dinner, and then this morning we had another shoot around here before the game. It was difficult getting used to the depth perception in here. With your first couple of shots you really have to adjust to playing in a bigger arena like this.”

On how this game has helped them prepare for the NAIA season…
“I feel like our big guys showed how good they are once they start attacking and playing hard. I know that our guards have a lot of work to do on the defensive end. We all have a lot of work to do, but overall we just need to be more physical as a team.”

Roosevelt Greene – Junior – Guard

On playing against Notre Dame…
“We came in thinking that they were going to pack their defense, and try to run their sets for Abromaitis. As the game went on we thought we could get out and run a little more. They are so much bigger than us, and we wanted to try to be quicker. I think we did a pretty good job of that.”

On their performance tonight…
“I feel good about the game. We came out and we played hard. I am pretty sure that Notre Dame is going to remember who the St. Xavier Cougars are. It was nice to play in front of a big crowd like this. I haven’t played in this kind of atmosphere since high school. It was fun. It is Notre Dame.”

On how he feels about the upcoming season…
“I feel pretty confident. If we can compete with these guys on the Division I level, I feel like we can compete with just about any team in the NAIA. The things that I take away from this game is that our guards are pretty good, and our bigs play very hard. Once we start rebounding better I think we are going to be a tough team to beat.”