Lorenzo Romar says Huskies’ defense ‘just unacceptable’ in 90-82 loss at Utah
Here’s everything Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar said after Washington’s 90-82 loss at Utah on Wednesday night at the Huntsman Center.
(Opening) “Give Utah credit, man. They sliced us up. They put us in positions where we had to make decisions defensively, and we didn’t make very good ones. You can play some other teams and they don’t put you in those positions. Well, Utah did, the entire time.”
(On the defensive breakdowns) “I can’t comment as much as I would like because I haven’t seen the film. I know what I think I saw, is a very poor – I won’t say defensive effort, but very negligent on the defensive end. Very negligent.”
(Was this surprising?) “Very much so. I felt that we had come a ways defensively, and I thought that we were making better decisions that way. This game here wasn’t what I was expecting at all.”
(Did Utah do anything differently than it did the first time? Did you guys do anything different defensively?) “A little bit. I thought we had shored up some of the things we didn’t do well defensively the last time. We go over those things in shootaround. The reason it catches you is because when you go over them, ‘OK good, we’re doing a good job. We should be OK.’ And then we come out as if we didn’t practice. It looks like we didn’t practice.”
(On Utah making so many 3-pointers) “Utah has four guys that can flat-out shoot the ball. We talked to our team about that. (Jordan) Loveridge, Dakarai Tucker, Brandon Taylor. Those guys can really, really shoot the basketball. We knew that. We knew that. There are certain guys that you want to make drivers, and other guys that you want to make shooters, and we did the reverse. (Lorenzo) Bonam, we talked to our team about, Bonam is a great driver. He can really get to the rim. But yet we crowded him the way we were supposed to crowd Loveridge and other guys. Just a lot of mistakes. Credit Utah, because they put us in positions where they exposed us.”
(On avoiding fouls but still not playing good defense) “No, we didn’t. You’d like to put the two together, but we didn’t do that. So we’ve got to do a much better job when we go to Boulder.”
(On Marquese Chriss’ game) “He played very well. I thought Andrew Andrews played very well. I thought Dominic Green played very well off the bench. But that wasn’t the issue. Offense was not the issue. It was the defensive end. That’s a shame.”
(Were the mistakes the same you’ve seen before on defense? Or new stuff?) “This was more like when we played in the second half against Arizona (in Tucson). They shot 70 percent in the second half. It was feast or famine for a long time. We forced 12 turnovers in the first half, so we were doing a good job sometimes. But if we didn’t force a turnover, they were scoring a basket. There weren’t a lot of rebounds because they made the majority of their shots. They didn’t kill us on the backboard in that regard. Just unacceptable. Until I watch the film, I can’t say a whole lot more about it.”
(On Utah clinching the game with an offensive rebound) “You put yourself in that position where you don’t take advantage of great opportunities, things like that just seem to happen to you. I thought in the first half, we had four or five opportunities in transition, and we just gave the ball back. I thought that was a crucial point in the game, because the game was so close. I thought we left 8 to 10 points out there that could have been ours. Transition, you’re supposed to convert. You’re at least supposed to get a shot at the rim, and sometimes we didn’t even get that. That kind of hurt.”
(On the team’s resolve being tested) “It’s been tested before. When we were at Arizona, we lost by 32 points and came back and won the next game. So it’s been tested before. There’s no reason to believe our guys are going to come back and have our heads down in our next game.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 9:39 PM with the headline "Lorenzo Romar says Huskies’ defense ‘just unacceptable’ in 90-82 loss at Utah."