Bo Ryan: The Bulgarian were too anxious and we took advantage from that

The Americans proved too strong

10-07-2009 20:47

Some of USA team for the Universiade in Belgrade, held a press conference after the game against Bulgaria. He is what they had to say:
USA head coach Bo Ryan, University of Wisconsin
"You always play every possession as if you are going to be successful on offense and on defense that you are going to get a stop. The fact that we put that many good possessions on both ends together in such a short period of time made all the difference in the world. It gave us a cushion and took some of their confidence away. They were fired up for this game. Our guys were excited too, obviously. But Bulgaria, I think maybe they tried a little too hard because they seemed anxious. They probably took some shots they would like to have back. We were smart enough to take advantage of that, and that got us the cushion. They made one run in the second half, got it under 20, which might not seem like a big deal, but it was. We lost our focus for a little while, but we got it back and improved the lead again."

James Anderson (Oklahoma State / Junction City, Ark.)
We tried to come out with a lot of energy. Once we got the lead, we just kept pushing and going at them. We didn't want to play careless and play with bad habits.

Da'Sean Butler (West Virginia / Newark, N.J.)
We knew they could shoot the ball very well. During the game you could see that if we helped too much, they would knock down open jump shots. But our whole thing was to make them attack and shoot in-between shots - no shots in the paint and no three pointers. They did a really good job of getting to the basket though. They didn't settle for long twos, so that gave us a little trouble.