Nov. 30, 2014
UCF head coach Donnie Jones
“I wanted to get [Justin McBride] in early because I thought he had worked hard the last few days. I think the thing with Justin is he’s trying to see where he fits in these games. He didn’t play in these non-conference games last year. He’s used to just playing against big guys. A lot of these games sometimes you play against under-sized big guys. It’s been a different match up for him. He’s kind of lost his confidence a little bit so he’s trying to figure out how do I fit in. I wanted to get him in early to try and get him established and get him going. He just really, really played well. I was happy for him.”
“Minutes were earned in practice. I thought the way the flow of the game was going, they were undersized at times with four guards in there. I just felt I had to stick with guards. We’re playing Shaheed Davis at the four right now, but he’s played the three. We started him at the three just so we could bring somebody off the bench that was a guard. Due to our injuries, with B.J. (Taylor) out and Matt Williams out for the year, we had five guards and now we’re down to three. So those guys had to play a lot of minutes tonight. I know we got tired there at the end. It showed defensively because we weren’t able to sub and go to our bench. We just don’t have the experience there right now, and guys who are playing are young guys. Brandon Goodwin is a sophomore; you have Adonys (Henriquez) out there playing 30-plus minutes as a freshman. We’re making a lot of young-guy mistakes, which these guys are going to learn from.”
“There are always some positives. Especially when you come off a disappointing showing against Davidson down the stretch, like we did last game. It was all about the next game. Your team has to put that behind it. You worry about a basketball team that is young, that lets the last loss beat them twice. So we really focused on moving on to the next game and focused on building on what we are doing well.”
UCF sophomore Justin McBride
“My teammates just found me. That’s all it was. I was posting hard and my teammates just really made an effort to throw me the ball. They just found me. I started scoring a little bit and the basket got bigger and bigger. I was knocking down free throws, and it just felt good.”
“I think going home and being able to re-charge for a day, was a big contributor. I’m just practicing hard, and just playing. I love to play with my team. They told me they were going to find me this game, and they did. That’s all it was.”
“They were playing so hard on the perimeter because we have some of the best shooters in the country. That opened it up for us in the post. I was expecting them to double-down in the second half, but they never did. It was one-on-one. Even when they shot the ball it was easy to get the rebound because they weren’t really boxing out. My teammates really made a point of getting me the ball. Sometimes they would sacrifice a turnover trying to get the ball inside to me or Staphon [Blair.] That was the biggest thing, them just forcing it in there. Letting us go to work, trusting us to go to work.”
Bethune-Cookman head coach Gravelle Craig
“The effort was good. We just had a couple of missed opportunities. When you’re playing a team of this caliber, you have to capitalize on your opportunities. We had a couple of missed layups and a couple of missed free throws. You have to put some pressure on them and make them pay, we just weren’t able to get over the hump.”
“You have to pick your poison with them. They do a good job of spacing the floor and shooting threes. We just decided to play him (McBride) one-on-one. Even in the zone we spaced it out a little bit. We knew the inside guy would score some points, but we didn’t expect it to be 31. We were trying to take away their outside guys, the outside threats so it opened up the inside a little bit.”