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| Monday, February 6, 2012 Final Score: New Orleans 92, Sacramento 100 Hornets Post Game Quotes Head Coach Monty Williams On the fourth quarter: “I even thought the way we finished the third quarter was not good at all. We made a change and put some subs in the game and couldn’t run an offense. We were a bit sloppy with our passing. Give them credit; they came out with more intensity. We gave up 61 points in a half, after holding them to 39 in the first half. A tale of two halves, once again down the stretch in the fourth quarter we can’t pull the game off. As frustrating as it is, you have no choice but to look in the mirror at yourself and try to figure out how you can help the situation.” On the rhythm of first half being much better than the second: “We have guys that are trying their best, and it’s hard to sustain the kind of high level intensity it takes to win an NBA game. We have guys who have probably never been in this position before. The things we are expecting of them; they are trying their best and are just not able to pull it out when the pressure goes up. We haven’t done it enough this year to merit any kind of confidence down the stretch. When things don’t go our way you can see us kind of weighing a bit. It’s unfortunate because they guys are trying their best.” On dealing with Evans and Cousins in the fourth: “Well you double [Tyreke] Evans, and he passes it up. They take a bad shot, then we allow [DeMarcus] Cousins to get a rebound. That can’t happen and that is a sign that we haven’t put our defense together to play four quarters the way that we need to. The first half we did it superbly, but the second half it was a bit of an experiment. There is nowhere to run. I told the players that. You can’t get out of it, and we will find out who is committed and who is not because this is a tough time we are going through.” Hornets Forward Trevor Ariza On the second half struggles: “That’s the story of our season so far. We play well in the first half, and then we let it go in the second half. I wish we could turn it around the other way and maybe play bad in the first half and play well in the second half to give ourselves a better chance. That’s what we’re dealing with. Hopefully, somehow we can turn it around.” On if he can point to a reason for the team’s second half struggles: “No, I can’t put my finger on it. Tonight they turned their intensity up in the second half. They got it going and played well.” Hornets Guard Greivis Vasquez On the second half struggles: “It’s terrible. I think as a point guard, I take responsibility. I have to do a better job of running the offense. Sometimes we relax offensively, and we struggle. We have to figure it out. We played well enough, and to lose again like this hurts. I thought we had that game won, but we didn’t win. They played harder than us in the second half.” On if there is a relaxation issue at the start of the fourth quarter: “I just think we have to execute our offense better, and it starts with me as the leader on the court. I have to run my team in a better way. There are no excuses. This is what it is. We have to get better. It’s not easy for us. It’s not easy for anybody. We played well enough, and to lose games like this, you can’t explain that. We’ve lost games by two or three points, and we keep doing the same thing over and over again. At some point we have to learn the hard way, hopefully soon.” Kings Post Game Quotes Head Coach Keith Smart On the game: “Once again, another scary game on the road but nevertheless it’s a win that we got on the road. The guys, we struggled big time. You know sometimes coming from the west coast and trying to adjust your body clock. I thought our guys finally picked up the pace. They had a nice discussion with each other at halftime. They picked up the pace and I thought they did a really good job. DeMarcus (Cousins) was two-points shy of his career high. Yet he was doing a great job on the glass. Field gold percentage wise at halftime we weren’t playing well, they were 47 percent. We managed to get that back down to a manageable number defensively to 42 percent. Then we made plays. We didn’t settle for the jump shot. We took the ball to the basket.” Kings Guard Marcus Thornton On the shot Marcus hit in the fourth quarter: “I credit my teammates for sticking with me, I wasn’t shooting the ball well and they told me to keep shooting and the kept coming to me. Once I caught it I felt good and the shot went down. You have shooting nights like I had tonight, but that’s why they call it team, I credit the way Isaiah (Thomas) stepped it up tonight, he really gave us a lift. It’s great to come back home and to top that off with a win is a great feeling.” Kings Center DeMarcus Cousins On his big individual effort: “I just wanted to go out and help our team get this win tonight. Put all the stats aside, the main thing is we got the win tonight and that’s all that matters. At halftime we talked about our effort in the first half and we knew we had to come out in the second half with much more energy and that’s what we did. We did a much better job in the second half hitting the boards and that helped us get going. The biggest thing is we’re improving each game and we’re getting better, we just need to keep it up.” |
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