Wake Forest basketball coach Gregory Ackles spoke with HighSchoolOT after his team's double OT win over Sanderson at the South Granville Holiday Invitational on Thursday.
Coach? Ackles, congratulations. Really hard-fought win for you guys here at South Granville against Sanderson double overtime tonight. You're down double digits first half. And even part of the second half, what did you guys kind of change to or whether that's adjustments or effort to get back into it?
We just, I mean, I told him in the half like we needed to get to the basket in transition. I know we're fast, we grab rebounds, and we can get the ball going. So my main thing at halftime was to attack the basket, we were down eight going into the fourth and I told him you're not in a bad spot, you just got to attack the basket. Don't settle for threes. And Sean does make a big three to tie it up, which essentially sends us overtime, but that was a driving kick. So we got in the lane, got into him. He's wide open down uh with the physicality and the strength you guys have, you're gonna be more physical than most teams you play.
Do you feel like you kind of wore him down toward the end there? It seems like maybe they got a little time. I don't know if that's what it was. I mean, they're good like you don't get attended to by mistake. Um 55 that can't complain, you know, and he's very smart to use his body getting cut, you all step in front of you keep you behind him like that kid who um you know, I don't know if it was a physicality, but at times, you know, after we were able to get rebounds, a lot of times we don't normally get, we were smart going to the basket at the end, taking getting blocks instead of charges, which is something we talked about at halftime. So, you know, it's just a matter of being smarter and taking care of the basketball, You go up seven in the first overtime, you see that go away.
What's the message, in the huddle after that first overtime to make sure they stay focused for the second and it's a good bass? Like we made a three. I told him we made a three to get the overtime, they made he made a heck of a shot, double clutch to get into double overtime. That's the third time that's happened to us this year. Normally I would file, but there's 3.5, he's fading to the corner, double clutch, you can't do anything about that. Um, so I told him like they came over and drop the head. I said, this is a great basketball game, like this is what you want to be and you want to be in this environment. So this kind of game, man, you can't, you can't complain and be the team, you know, that's 10 and oh, I think the News Observer got hit number nine in the state, number 10 in the state, somewhere in that range. So you know, our thing just come out play hard and we know, you know, we know we're capable of when we played.
We got the sense, you know, we didn't play well in the first quarter, which was all credit to them, you know, but that's over time. You know, I think we played very well. You got to play for a title tomorrow. It'll be South Granville or Orange, depending on how this game goes. Um, you know, short turnaround, gonna be some tired legs. But do you want to see it to make sure you're ready for it? I mean, we don't need motivation for a championship. You know, we were fortunate last year Bond, we won a championship last year Bond. Um, so there's no speech really for me to give, they know exactly what it is. Um I told them this week I wanted to be able to try to, you know, have a, have a, I want to play on Friday night at 8 30. And you know, we're fortunate enough we got by, got by with two points to four wins. So we'll be back tomorrow night
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