Sophomore guard Anthony Goods
Is it fair to say that the pressure by Louisville you faced today was not close to anything Stanford had faced this year?
"Full court pressure is not something we had seen in games, but we worked on
it in practice. We practiced hard, but we just came out too tentative
today."
What was the goal against the press? What were you supposed to do?
"We planned on attacking it, and we got out there and just started thinking
too much. We started playing to their advantage when we started thinking
and forced turnovers."
Did this being the first NCAA Tournament for many Stanford players
contribute to being tentative?
"It may have. A lot of it is just basketball. We just didn't
play; we didn't handle the pressure well. We may have had some jitters in
the beginning, but that doesn't excuse the whole 40 minutes of basketball."
Can you talk about the emotions you have now, with this game concluding
your season, and how you will carry that into this off-season of work?
"You hate to go out like this. Of course we wish we could have won, but
we just have to use it as fuel to the fire. I'm really anxious to get back
out in the next couple of weeks and get back to working with these guys in open
gyms and individual workouts. Hopefully we can all improve in the summer
and come back a better team next year."
Sophomore forward Lawrence Hill
Was
their pressure better than you anticipated?
"I don't think so, but they do what they want out of there very well.
They're in the right position. Their pressure is designed to cause
turnovers, and they did that."
Obviously it didn't end up the way you wanted it to, but what do you take
away from this season?
"We can appreciate the contributions of our seniors, Carlton [Weatherby] and
Chris Bobel. We can look at the wins we had against good Pac-10 teams, and
we can see the Pac-10 showing itself nationally how capable it is. Guys
like Anthony and Fred [Washington] showed that they improved a lot. Our
team showed that we could come out and still overcome a big deficit against
teams like UCLA. That's really good to look back on that. You can't
take that away from us. That's why we got here."
Can you talk about the emotions you have now, with this game concluding
your season, and how you will carry that into this off-season of work?
"The upcoming couple weeks, rest up. Then the spring and summer is
where you individually get a lot better, and that's the goal. We're just
going to go out there - a lot of pick-up ball and a lot of lifting. Those
are things that should help us out a lot for team ball in October."
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