On the status of Yves Pons:
“I do think he will be back. He worked really hard in trying to play tonight. He is such a competitive player, and he has done everything he could. He obviously has not practiced (in a few days), but he wanted to see all day the last couple of days just to see if he could get enough confidence to play. The swelling is going down in the knee. But you know again tonight I would like to think if he was in the game, he would give us a little bit of that rim protection that we missed tonight and we needed to have. But again I think he was going to play. I have not talked to Chad Newman, but he was trying to play tonight, so another couple days off so he might be ready. I will be surprised if he doesn’t, but I don’t know. When we drove back over tonight he had not made that decision whether he would or he would not. He really tried to play, but he just could not get confident enough to be able to do it.”
On what he likes best about what Jaden Springer is doing well right now:
“Well he is doing a lot of things well obviously offensively he has been explosive there. He can score at all three levels, and you guys see that. He is learning a lot, and I think he is still learning a lot about his game and things that he can do that he maybe has not been asked to do that we are expecting him to do a lot. Defensively, he’s really good night in and night out, but he was tired fatigue-wise. At one time three guys wanted out of the game, but we only took one, and we went with the one who had been out there the longest. But I am really proud of him with Keon (Johnson) sitting a little bit longer tonight because of foul trouble, otherwise he probably would have been into the thirties. At the end of the game, I thought we did good when they were pressing for the most part when they would get us in the double teams we would pass out. We made good decisions, and Jaden will learn now that he has a really big target on him when he starts to play one-on-one and in isolation situations. We would like him to move the ball quicker, and he is going to have to understand that spin will not be there because people are going to get that and try to steal that.”
NEXT: Rick Barnes postgame continued