Jonathan Powell spoke to the media following North Carolina’s 97-53 win over NC Central. Powell finished the game with nine points and four rebounds.
To hear what he had to say, check out the video below.
Here is a partial transcript from Hubert Davis’ postgame presser.
Coach, after the Radford game, Henry said you guys were horrible on defense. Tonight, you guys blocked more shots than in the first three games combined. How would you assess your guys’ performance on that end?
I felt like defensively we just continued to get better throughout the game. From an offensive standpoint they were taking us one-on-one, milking time off the clock, and then with 15–10 seconds on the shot clock they were trying to take us.
And I just felt throughout the entire game we just got better—one-on-one defense, our ball-screen attack, our switches were better, we were boxing out better. And so I felt overall it was a really good defensive night for us.
You guys have seen quite a bit of zone the last couple of games. The guys said you hadn’t worked on a ton, but it’s been very valuable to go up against it in the games. What do you think you guys have gotten out of the last couple games?
Yeah, well, I mean, we worked on it pretty extensively the last couple days in preparation for North Carolina Central. They threw a number of different zones—1-3-1, 2-3, matchup zone. Obviously in other games, Radford played zone as well. So just trying to become more efficient with that.
From an offensive standpoint, it’s still the same. We want to dominate points in the paint through post, penetration, and offensive rebounding. And so whether a team plays man or zone, that’s something that’s an emphasis for us offensively. I felt like we did a better job of that in the second half looking
What was your message at halftime about the 10 turnovers? Obviously something changed in the second half.
It did. We had zero turnovers in the second half. It’s something that we talk about and I talk about to them every day— the importance of making the easy play. I give them every slogan: make the easy play, make routine plays routinely…