Nov. 24, 2008

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California coach Mike Montgomery

On whether he sees his team making steady progress:
Basketball's such an imperfect game - there's always so many things that you can always find - I think they're really trying on defense, though. We have not really faced a team that has made us pay for our mistakes, and that's going to change here pretty quickly. [But] we've got some guys that are working at it. In order to prepare for the Pac-10, we're going to have to play teams that, when you make a mistake, they make you pay. Sometimes now, you don't really even know you're making a mistake.

On how Cal adjusted to a cooler shooting night as a team:
We didn't shoot the ball tonight as well as we have, which I suppose is natural. You can't ever expect to shoot it like we have. But we moved the ball, generally speaking. We're not turning the ball over a lot.

On how much he's learned about the team heading into the weekend finale of the Global Sports Classic in Las Vegas:
There's still position people that we don't know exactly where they fit. We were able to get [D.J.] Seeley and Omondi [Amoke] some time and I thought that was valuable. Vegas is going to be a good tournament for us, I think.

On the key to tonight's win:
We turned them over a little bit - they had 19 turnovers. We picked up the pressure. I thought we did a pretty good job understanding what they wanted to do: they pretty much want to get you with their defense. It's Louisville 1-2-2, adjust the press, trap sometimes, run and jump, and we didn't really turn it over very much against it. We only had 9 turnovers.

North Carolina A&T coach Jerry Eaves

On whether the road trip hindered his team performance tonight:
The jetlag got my kids; we could not compete. I didn't know if it hit us in Vegas or here, but we couldn't stand up tonight. We've been out four days and traveling like crazy.

On his impressions of Cal point guard Jerome Randle:
I love him. I think he's probably one of the better point guards in the country. He does a great job. I told my guards it's someone they need to emulate. He leads the team, he's in control of the situation, he shoots it selectively but he shoots it very well.