UMass 66, Colorado 63 – Post-game Quotes

UMass Coach Frank Martin – “Tad and I have become friends over the years because we serve on all these committees and all these boards. I remember competing against him when I was at K-State and he does an incredible job. His team’s good. I’m really proud of our guys. We made a lot of defensive mistakes defensively and as the game evolved, I thought we defended really well and then our offense let us down in the last five minutes of the game or so. That’s part of the learning process. The last four or five minutes of the game stopped listening and you can’t do that in this type of game. The basketball gods protected us because we almost messed that game up at the end.” (On his return to South Carolina): “We’ve got a lot to do but I’m extremely happy where I’m at right now. We’ve got unbelievable relationships with people in this state. This state was unbelievable to me and my family 10 years ago. My kids are pretty much South Carolinians and it’s a place that will always be special to us.”

 UMass guard Noah Fernandes – “That was a good team win. We gutted it out. At the end we had some mental errors I think we could fix to put us in a better position to win but it’s always good to critique after a ‘W’ rather than after a loss. After playing against Towson it kind of opened up our eyes and our mentality like we’ve really got to bring it.” (On the number of minutes being spread around the roster): “We’ve got a lot of depth and talent and everybody on the roster plays hard. For a coach, it makes it hard to figure out who to put in the game and as a team I think that’s what you want to do to the coach. The fact we’re doing it will have a great impact for the future.”

 Colorado Coach Tad Boyle – “Nobody could guard Fernandes in the first half and nobody could guard (RJ) Luis and he’s a freshman. He’s a talented player but he hasn’t done that against anybody they’ve played but he did against us. Our first half defense was nowhere near where we needed to be. Our guys fight, they come back, they claw, they scratch. . . . we’re not good enough for 40 minutes. There are a lot of good players in college basketball. We weren’t ready to go from the get-go. I don’t know why but with that being said, we had a shot there at the end to win the thing. We had some good looks that didn’t. We had 20 more shots than they did and at some point you have to finish the shots that you have whether they’re at the 3-point line, whether they’re in the lane, whether they’re at the rim. And UMass did a better job finishing offensively than we did from every position.”

 Colorado forward Tristan da Silva – “Energy from the get-go, we were lacking in that. We had the same issue from Grambling to Tennessee. We’ve got to get that right. On offense we kind of struggled to finish, so they got the ball off the boards and ran us.”