By Matt Jones and Zach Mariner, sports editors

North Carolina stepped on the gas in the second half and never let up, defeating the Hokies 82-64 in front of a sold out Cassell Coliseum.

Seth Greenberg, Robert Brown and Erick Green spoke with the media following the loss, which drops the Hokies to 0-4 in ACC play.

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Seth Greenberg

OPENING STATEMENT: “This is going come as a shock to some of you, but I like my team, and I think that we’re showing improvement. I thought in the second half, they might’ve worn us down a little bit. I thought in the second half we didn’t do a good job in defensive transition, and we took a couple shots that we need to learn about. Things that we wanted to try to do, put certain guys in ball screens, handle the scramble, compete on the backboards in the first half, we didn’t do a very good job of that in the second half. We’re a young team that’s a work in progress, and there are some very positive things to take out of it. It’s real easy to be doom and gloom and have a whole bunch of negative energy, and that’s not going to happen. Like I said, no one said this was gonna be easy, but I think we took a step forward, and that team we played is a very, very good basketball team that played really well in the second half. And we did not play as composed, we didn’t get the stops so we could get out and make their bigs run. In the second half, instead of taking what the defense gave, we tried to force and try to make plays, when really what we need to do is make the next pass, make a cut, and then make a play. But there are a lot of positives we can take out of this.”

ON ROBERT BROWN STARTING OVER DORENZO HUDSON: “He didn’t start because I started Robert Brown. I thought that he could come off the bench, get a feel for it, maybe be the Energizer Bunny that we’ve been missing. Obviously, he made his first five shots, so it looked brilliant for a while there. Then, as a group, I thought we forced a couple shots, and those bad shots against them are like live ball turnovers. They’re going to convert those easy scoring opportunities. I don’t think it was out of selfishness, I think guys were just really trying hard. Our spacing wasn’t as good in the dribble-drive, and we weren’t getting deep enough with penetration to force help.”

ON WHAT CHANGED IN THE SECOND HALF: “What happened early on in the second half was we made a couple turnovers and we took a couple bad shots. In the first half, we had a good tempo. When we ran, we ran. When we didn’t run, we went into the clock a little bit, and even though we didn’t get exactly what we wanted, they weren’t on offense. We had good floor balance. In the second half, we didn’t have that same poise.”

ON THE HOME CROWD: “This is ACC basketball. Long-term, if you’re going to be successful in this league, you look at the success we’ve had in this league since we’ve been in it, just take the last five years. I think we’ve won nine games twice, 10 games once, and then 7-9. You need that. Even when you’re 0-4 and struggling when you have a young team, people get behind that young team, and you need that. And we had that today. ACC basketball was built on ownership and passion and energy. It wasn’t built on, “we’re going to have energy if we’re winning,” it was built on “this is my team.” And, there will be some negative. That’s just a part of it. My thing is, the people were unbelievable. The crowd was great. You saw how the kids responded, we just couldn’t hang on with it.”

ON GETTING BETTER SHOTS IN THE HALFCOURT OFFENSE: “I think they had a little bit to do with it. And quite honestly, taking it in there, you wanna take it in there to pitch it back out. They had nine blocks. They’re a hard team to score against around the basket. How did Florida State beat them? Bernard James is a mountain masquerading as a man. But really, they beat them because they made a lot of threes. What we’re doing, and we’re running sets in the dribble-drive, that’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’ve chosen to do because of our undersized team, and then we run the spread ball screens. That’s what we feel is in the best interest of the players that we have and trying to utilize them. That’s my professional opinion.”

Robert Brown

ON THE SECOND HALF RUN: “I really don’t know what to say. They just made their run. We didn’t battle back like we did in the first half.”

WHAT CAUSED THE RUN? “Harrison Barnes hit some shots that we played great defense on and he just hit them, can’t really do much about it. We still have to be tougher, and during that stretch we lost some of our toughness. Coach told us after the game we’ve got to be tougher.”

ON GETTING HIS FIRST START: “It was cool, first start against a great team like Carolina. I’d like to thank coach for that, but it would’ve been a lot better if we’d come away with this win.”

ON WHY HE STARTED: “I’m not really sure what his decision was about it. He called me into his office a couple days ago and said he was going to start me.”

ON DORENZO COMING OFF THE BENCH: “He kept us in the game, especially in the first half he came in with a spark we really needed. If he can keep doing that, and this is going to be the lineup coach sticks with, then we’ll really need him to continue doing that.”

ON WHAT TECH DID IN THE FIRST HALF TO BUILD A LEAD: “Playing tough, getting stops and running. Once we got out in the open floor and started running, Dorenzo hit some open threes, I was able to hit one, Erick was able to get to the rim and hit some threes. After we got those stops and playing tough on defense, we got some easy buckets.”

ON THE HALFCOURT OFFENSE: “At times we can kind of be stagnant with it, and other times we can be fluent and playing well. I just think we need to keep working and we’ll be good.”

ON WHAT OFFENSE TECH LIKES TO RUN: “Harrison Barnes hit some great shots during that run where we played great defense, and if he’s hitting those, we can’t get the ball and run like we want to. We have the type of team that’s comfortable running up and down the floor, pushing it, finding open people. That’s what we want to play, but if they’re hitting open shots like (Barnes) was, we can’t really do much.”

ON BEING PREPARED FOR CAROLINA’S RUN: “Basketball is a game of runs. We knew we made ours in the first half, and we would have to defend theirs. They came out and hit us, and we weren’t able to keep (the lead).”

ON IF TECH EXPECTED IT: “They missed some wide open shots. A great team like that, they’re going to hit them in the second half. Coach just told us (at halftime) that we need to come out and defend better, keep our intensity up. They were hitting tough shots, tough shots that we defended right.”

ON PLAYING CAROLINA FOR THE FIRST TIME: “They were big, real long. Everything coach told us in the scouting report they did out there. We just weren’t able to stop that run they made, and it blew the game open.”

Erick Green

ON WHERE THE OFFENSE NEEDS WORK: “We have to get the ball down low more. I think we have to go off of Vic, Cadarian instead of just standing up top dribbling and trying to make three-pointers. We did that first half and got hot, but we need to realize second half when it’s not working, we need to do something else. Attacking the basket, getting the bigs involved, stuff like that.”

ON THE INJURED KNEE: “Not 100 percent, but I’m good enough to play. No excuses on that. I’m in a little pain, not going to lie.”

ON PLAYING A FULL GAME: “We just got to come to play, play two halfs. We’re not doing the little things to put two halfs together. That’s what’s killing us at the end of the day.”