Everything Andy Enfield said following SMU's defeat to Louisville

Coach Enfield was disappointed with SMU‘s performance on Tuesday night. He was shocked their scoring did not translate from the win in Miami.

Opening statement: “Unfortunately, it was not our best effort on offense or defense. And it seemed like we couldn’t make a layup in the first half and they were making everything and they got out to a lead and scored on us. Very disappointing loss for us. Give them credit, they played very well and we really struggled offensively in the first half.”

On not being able to carry over success from Miami game: “I was shocked, actually. We had a very successful road trip. We played a game in Charlottesville against a team of a different style and played as hard as we have all season defensively. Grinded a win out, and we played Miami, and we really shared a ball. We had 28 assists Played extremely well offensively to score 117 points. We felt very confident and as a coaching staff, we thought we were going to play very well offensively tonight. It just didn’t happen. We missed so many easy shots and layups in the first half and when that happens and they’re making shots of the other it’s very deflating. I could see it in our guys’ faces but you have to fight through that. Unfortunately, Louisville stayed hot for a while before that second-half run we made.”

On the importance of showing up in the big games: “Yeah, a couple of games that we’ve lost at home, the Duke game, this game, we didn’t play very well. I think the teams we played are very good, but we didn’t play well. We didn’t play to our standard that we’ve been playing most of the season. And every team has had off nights throughout the year. Unfortunately, this was an off night for us and it was very frustrating. Frustrating for everybody, the fans who came to support us, our players, and our coaching staff. And so we do have some other very good teams coming in here to Moody. And we hit the road and then we have four out of five at home. So this is a very important part of our schedule here for the next three weeks.”

On Samet’s defensive struggles against Louisville: “He’s a freshman. He’s still learning. He’s still going through some things defensively and he had trouble getting to the level of the ball screen. So there was no resistance at the point of attack and then he let the role man get behind him when he was in his drop coverage so [there are] things we’ll work on. He’s a terrific young man. He’s learned a lot. He’s improved so much, but it’s just not him. You know any time that you play defense, it’s team defense. So we struggled team defensively, you know, not just Samet.”

On where the defensive game plan when wrong: “Well, they share a ball very well and they have guys on the team that know when they’re in his area, they screen for [Reyne] They do a good job of that. So a couple of times especially the first half our players got caught on the screens on the weak side he skipped it over and he hit threes from screening action. And so they do a good job of trying to find him and the guys without the ball do a good job of screening for him.”

On if SMU played better defense than the stats show: “Well, when you’re a great shooter like [Reyne] and you make a couple and you feel confident, he doesn’t bring the ball down. He just catches it and shoots it, kind of like Klay Thompson where he has a high release. And you’re right, four or five of those that he made were extremely contested and sometimes a defender, you have to be there. But he was hot, I think he started seven for his first nine, and it was impressive. And he saw a couple go in and I guess he felt good because he kept shooting them and kept making them. So when you guard an elite shooter like that, you have to be all over him and know where he is at all times.”

On if changes will be made after Tuesday night’s loss: “Well, we were playing very well, we had just won three games in a row. We were playing very well together. And as I said, we played very hard in the last three games. We played very well, we scored a lot of points in two of those games. Defensively, we were doing what we needed to do. And so this is surprising, it’s surprising to us, the coaching staff. I’m sure our players are surprised that we didn’t play better tonight. And our fans, we had great support tonight, and we’re disappointed that we didn’t perform to the level that we expected ourselves to.”

On what was said at halftime: “Well, it’s not the time to yell and scream and point out individual players. It’s time to try to stay together as a team. And so we just focused on a couple of things offensively: the ball screen coverage started switching more in the second half. We played a lot of zone in the second half. I bet that helped us get back into the game when we cut the lead to 17. And we had that nice run where we were getting stops. Yes, you go 6/29 in the first half and miss all those layups and threes, it wasn’t necessarily what we’re running or what kind of scheme we’re doing it’s you guys gotta step up and make shots when they have easy ones, especially the easy ones. And we’ve been doing that for a long time unfortunately, we just kind of snowballed for our entire team tonight, and we missed a lot of easy ones to allow them to go in those big runs.”