NC State's Ven-Allen Lubin and Darrion Williams met with the media after the 77-76 overtime loss to No. 19 Kansas.
For both of you, just your thoughts on this game as a whole, and how you guys competed in this one, especially getting into overtime as opposed to some of the other bigger games you've had so far, not being as competitive, at least on the defensive end.
LUBIN: Yeah, I think even though we didn't get the results we wanted, I feel like we showed ourselves that we can compete with anybody. I think we did a really good job just maintaining their best player, just trying to control their offense a little bit, and just trying to force them to take tough ones, and just trying to go out there and do what we do on the offensive end. So I think we did a really good job of just making some good steps on offense and defensively, and we can't really hang our heads too low from the results.
All we can do is just look back at this, learn from our mistakes down the stretch that cost us the game, but I think we did some good things.
Darrion, talk a little bit about overtime. You had a couple of shots to fall, just talk about what the last play was.
WILLIAMS: Shoot. I mean, the play was for me, I just got it, and I missed it. I'm going to make it next time, but it was just for me to shoot it, basically.
Darrion, I wanted to ask you about Ven's production, because this is the, I believe, now sixth or seventh straight game with double-digit points from him, and eighth straight? Okay, I apologize. Eighth straight, and now your third double-double in the last six games, I mean, how much has that kind of helped the team to be able to know that you have that consistent production down low?
WILLIAMS: It was great. I think he's the most, honestly, consistent guy we've got on and off the court of basketball. If you just follow him for a day, you'll see what I'm talking about, and he's just selfless. He just wants to win. Even if he's not touching the ball a lot, you'll never see him pout or anything like that. He just wants to win.
I think we do a good job of finding him, but he also does a great job of getting into open spaces, and when he gets his chances, he finishes, and then he gets a lot of rebounds for us. Even if he doesn't get them, he'll tip them out. I think he does a great job of that, and he does stuff that doesn't show up on the stat sheet that we all see, so I really appreciate him.
On what Kansas did to force a poor shooting night from three...
LUBIN: I wouldn't say Kansas really stopped us. I think it was just one of those off nights that we had things coming into the game. It was pretty amped up, and warm-ups, we were making shots, feeling good about ourselves, and it's one of those nights that, shots didn't really fall, so we had to find another way to, put the ball in the basket without some free throws or getting the ball in the paint, and just not to rely too much on our three-pointers.
But we know that we still are capable of making those, so we want to continue to have the confidence instilled in all of us, to still shoot them.
What positives do you feel like y'all can take away?
WILLIAMS: I think just, shoot, playing harder than we did in some of our other big games. I think, like, when we played at Maui, or we played at Auburn, when stuff got out of hand, we didn't really necessarily fight back, we just kind of let it, let what happened happen.
So I think we did a better job of that, but we just got to do a better job of finishing, finishing the game and finishing halves, and just playing consistently throughout the game instead of just in spurts.
What was the game plan on council, and when you see him start to make some of those threes, what are you guys thinking as an opponent?
LUBIN: The scouting part on him was just to kind of back off on him a little bit. The coaches saw that he wasn't a really good three-point shooter, so we kind of wanted to dare to take those shots, because they would be good for us.
Once he started knocking them down, we had to make some adjustments to at least step a little bit outside and contain and contest the shots, but he was able to knock them down. We weren't really expecting that from him, and so we tried to make some adjustments along the way.
Darrion, you already transferred to NC State. I imagine this is the kind of moment you wanted to have, obviously had the last shot going, but the kind of game you wanted to play, and what do you think you've learned about this team through the non-conference schedule here so far?
WILLIAMS: I think, well, I know we've gotten better since the last couple of weeks, compared to, like, from the Seton Hall game to now, I think we've just grown together as a team and just started playing harder. I have to be better for the team. I think I played pretty badly, so I think I've got to be better, but my teammates trust me, and I trust my teammates, and we're going to stick together regardless of what happens.
Obviously, these suck to lose, you want to win these close ones, but I think we're better for it, and I just want to thank the fans, my 19,000 coming out, they helped us a lot throughout this game, and without them, who knows what it would have been, but yeah, I appreciate them, but yeah, I think I just got to be better, but I love this team.
For either of y'all, it kind of seemed like when you would go into those rough offensive stretches, Quadir would get either a nice feed to an open layup, or open three, or get a tough layup himself. Can you speak about the impact he has on this team?
WILLIAMS: I think he's playing great. With both his hands, he makes the right decision, and he has a knack for getting fouled, and he can get downhill any time he wants, and yeah, he's very vocal with everybody, he tries to keep everybody confident, he gets a little crazy out there as you can see, kind of when he gets all excited, but no, I mean, he's a great player, he wants to win really bad, so I think that's his best quality.
On guarding Melvin Council IV and making adjustments to him throughout the game…
WILLIAMS: I mean, I was expecting 9 from 15 from 3, but I mean, he's a great player, and he's got going, he's seen the first couple go in, and any player at this level, you give him a few good looks, just gets him going. He only made four other shots, so I think we could have done better in that department, obviously, but yeah, we just didn't do well enough adjusting as a team. Coach told us what to do, but we just didn't do it.
