Feb. 27, 2012

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Notre Dame Head Coach Mike Brey

“Well, let’s get this over with so I can get back to South Bend. They really defended us. I’m very impressed with them defensively. Their length and their size and their quickness bothered us. We had I give a lot of credit to Georgetown and their defense. That may be the best defensive team we’ve played against this season.”

On the loss and doing something better…
“I think it’s great. It comes at a good time. It’s a nice wake-up after an unbelievable run for us, this stretch in New York and D.C. I talked to them very level-headed in the locker room about us needing some had, I’m very proud of our group. We need some practice time, and it’s a one-game season now. We’ve got one game left in the season to achieve something with the double bye.”

On what will help get that edge back…
“The karma wasn’t good tonight. A lot of that was Georgetown’s doing. They got the 50/50 balls, put- backs, get

On where the game was lost in the second half…
“Even going some good looks. We’re going to have to make some more threes. We didn’t shoot it very well on this St. harassed because they’re so long.”

On Jack Cooley
“I know for Jack he’s very disappointed. I couldn’t figure out how to help him. We got him out, we played small. That is by far his worst effort. For him to play 25 minutes and not get a rebound is staggering. step

On changing defenses in the first half…
“The zone helped us, saved us for a while. But we couldn’t score on the other end. We change defenses, we go back and forth and we’ve had a nice mix of that. They were hard to defend man to man assist play a point guard much tonight, they just played big guys. But we had a hard time guarding them man to man.”

On where to start when the team returns to South Bend…
“We won’t over-analyze it. We need a little recovery. Martin’s got a little bit of a tweaked ankle. I didn’t that’s unbelievable. We’ve got to get back and just get into some October practice plans. We need some breakdown defensive stuff, some competition drills. We just need a little bit of that twice on Wednesday, night

On the development of Atkins and Grant…
“They’re a big part of the program now. They didn’t play as well as they wanted to here [tonight]. They very bleak last time when we were here on December 4th. Those two guys just continue to get better. I think they will become one of the better backcourts in this league quickly. They’ve made us believe and it started back in mid-January. I’m really proud of them. It’s tough for them losing here, they really

Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III

On Georgetown’s smothering defensive effort…
I thought our defense was very good today. You play a team like that where they have so many good shooters, to go through a game and only allow them to take 17 threes is a big deal. Forget the fact they only made three, but the fact that they only took 17…something they are good at doing, something they try to do…I thought our guys were pretty attentive, our close-outs were good. We did a good job of protecting the three point line, but not staying spread out, so with penetration they had clear passes.

On what went into the defensive effort…
The guys worked, I thought Jason (Clark) set the tone from the beginning and was consistent throughout the game. I thought Henry (Sims) did a good job defending Cooley, because he makes you work. It’s hard to guard him, Henry is going to sleep well tonight, because he makes you work.

On the team channeling the emotion of Senior Night in the team’s win…
I think we went into this understanding how well we needed to play defense to win. If you relax a prepared that’s all we talked about, we have to have a good effort defensively.

On the difference in the team’s defensive effort in the last two victories…
You don’t want to keep going back to it, but that’s following a very poor performance at Seton Hall. We’ve said all year when we defend and rebound, we’ll score enough points to win.

On the difficulty of changing Notre Dame’s pace…
They’re slow. I don’t mean the personnel, I mean the pace at which they play. They call it the burn offense, because they’re burning the clock. We discussed this a lot, you have to guard for 35 seconds. I clock better than any team in the country. What they do is they get you chasing, they get you chasing and then they attack. They’re banking on the fact that you don’t want to stick to your principles and possession we have to defend and then we have to go get the rebound, because they hurt you when you guard them for 30 seconds and they bang a three or you guard for 31 seconds, then they miss, get a

On Henry Sims performance on offense…
That’s turn to score and when is it his turn to get a shot. For most of the year with a few glaring exceptions I think he’s been very good at that balance of when is it my turn and when should I get my teammate a shot.

On the inside-outside play on offense…
I think we wanted to do that. The way that they defend a lot of times, you end up taking as many threes as they do, just passing around the perimeter and taking threes. We wanted to make sure we got it in and got it back out. Our guys were good today, there’s no other way around it, they were good.

On a chance to get a double bye with a win at Marquette…
Honestly, I don’t know where we stand. I know we’re up there, but we have to go and beat Marquette…My answer is the same, I guess I’m trying to be coy, but not trying to be a smart alec, forget all that. We have to win our next game. Forget all that we have to prepare for our next game and after that we have to prepare for our next game. to prepare for the next game. So we have to go and spend the next few days and put all of our energy into see if we can find a way to beat a very tough Marquette team on their home court.

On Greg Whittington emerging as a scorer…
He forgot that we still need him to rebound. You look at this stat sheet here, Whittington, one rebound. this, our team knows this, he knows this, Greg is a scorer. You go through this year, he’s a freshman. He’s kind of getting his feet wet, getting adjusted and hasn’t scored yet the way he can. That today, in spite surprise to anyone in our locker room. The rebounding was, he usually rebounds.