America East Men’s Basketball Tournament
March 2, 2007
Hartford Post-game quotes
Head coach Dan Leibovitz’s opening comments:
“I hope to coach for a long time and I just do not know if I will ever have a team quite like this team. We may have more talent and we may have a bigger team, but I do not know if we will ever have a team with this kind of heart. I wish I could take a lot of credit for it but we just have some guys that refuse to stop playing. They are as fun for me to coach as they are for you to watch. I felt like we had every loose ball down the stretch. There are some teams that will do anything not to go home and there are some teams that will be ready to go home because they are tired of it. I told them we have to be the team that shows that want to keep playing. I am just proud of the effort that we played together. There have never been egos on the team and that is a great lesson to learn. I tip my hat off to Stony Brook; they came out very well prepared, they played an excellent game and almost knocked us out. We were lucky to get back in it.”
Bo Taylor, on hitting the winning shot
“It was great. Like you said in the first half we could not hit anything. I thought I could have gotten a couple of calls. However, I could not put my head down all I had to do was pick up a couple of calls.”
On what it was like watching the team comeback:
“It was great. It was like I was watching the past couple of games. We kept our heads high. Like I said before it was just like coach had it on the board.”
On what coach said at halftime
“He told us we were not going to go out like that.”
Coach Leibovitz:
“We did not come out aggressive defensively in the first half. Protect ourselves with foul trouble. We wanted to be able to attack and pressure the ball the way we like to. In the second half, and the circumstances we had to make them hurry their shots.”
On playing Vermont tomorrow on one day’s rest
“We got some left in the tank. Certainly not an easy game, but it is a great challenge. I know they are looking forward to it. We had two great games at Vermont and they are a great team. We can only benefit from it. It is a great opportunity.
Stony Brook Head Coach Steve Pikiell
General Comments
“It comes down to if you can’t score, you can’t win a basketball game like that. We’re young. You saw some of our youth today.”
“I thought we were well-prepared for this game. We attacked their zone the right way, but it’s just really disappointing.”
On Mike Popoko and the senior class
“He’s been a warrior for us. I’m going to miss our three seniors and I mean that sincerely. They are part of what’s going to be built at Stony Brook. We’re going to win at Stony Brook and we’re going to win the right way.”
On Hartford’s second half adjustment
They changed up the defenses and, you know, our guys were real tentative attacking. I used a couple of time outs to get them to not play scared. You gotta win basketball games; you can’t hope the clock ticks off. Give Hartford credit, they made big shots.”
Senior Forward Mike Popoko
On the team’s second-half performance.
“We got a big lead and we got tentative. We started playing scared and that was basically it. We can’t find shots, we can’t make shots. All through the first half we were getting offensive rebounds and in the second half we couldn’t get any offensive rebounds.”
Did he think the team relaxed in the second half?
“Throughout the season Hartford had come back from some pretty big leads, so we never had that feeling that the game was over.”