What Josh Eilert Said Following the Win Over UCF
The West Virginia Mountaineers (9-17, 4-9) handled the UCF Knights (13-12, 4-9) Tuesday night 77-67.
Opening statement
Credits to our guys. We spoke after the game in terms of executing the game plan, especially when you're switching defenses like that, sometimes it can create a lot of confusion, but our guys locked in on the game plan. We changed some things up defensively in our man - went back and forth with our defenses and certainly our guys took that and ran with it and executed it. So, credit to our guys for taking that approach and especially after the last one in Orlando and figuring out what we can do different and executing that. It was night and day difference.
Defensive effort
We thought, they're not the best three-point shooting team by any means and they really pounded down low on us [in the last meeting] and I didn't want them trying to manage (senior center) Jessie (Edwards), that's been an issue in terms of keeping him out of foul trouble. I thought that was probably our best option to do so if we can get as many zone possessions as possible with him. And we rebounded fairly well out of it. Which shouldn't really be the case but we're not exactly a normal team over the course of the year. So, we shouldn't some crazy anomalies. But regardless, those guys locked in and figured we got kind of punched in the mouth down there in Orlando and we didn't back down tonight. I think one of the keys, looking back at it, they threw that token press at us, and we didn't go side to side with slower offensive offense down, and we kind of attacked it early, which was I think was a critical part of the game that we weren't kind of playing offense on our heels which we were in Orlando.
Point guard Kerr Kriisa’s seven assists and one turnover
He was really, really good tonight and as a team 15 assists, were plus on assist to turnover ratio but 15 assists, 15 or more, usually we're pretty good. Seven to one, credit to him. He really controlled the game and several aspects that it's nice for first year head coach to have a guy with that type of experience out there that can control the game. So, he did an excellent job, and I'll be the first to admit I put our guys in a terrible position a couple of times that, you know, I can look back and learn from this game too. So, it's good to have veterans out there. It got a little lackadaisical late in terms of taking care of the ball against their pressure and getting in the right position but kind of let our guard down there.
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