Dayton 64, Fordham 50: Quotes From Archie Miller

Dayton head coach Archie Miller's opening statement:
"First, I'd like to give a lot of credit to Fordham. I think Coach (Jeff) Neubauer and his staff have really brought an energy level to their players, and they play extremely hard. Watching them on film and how many problems they're causing teams, particularly at home, we were very mentally, I thought, ready to go. We were in for a battle. We got off to a great start, really moved the ball, shared it as well as we have all year and then had to fight it out, which you expect to do on the road, in particular against a team that's competing as hard as Fordham was, but I'd like to give Charles Cooke a big, large chunk of credit. He let the game come to him, and I think Scoochie (Smith) did a great job as well handling the ball for 34 minutes."

On Charles Cooke (26 points, 6 rebounds) and how he has helped maintain continuity in Dayton's backcourt:
"A lot. Those two guys, being Kyle (Davis) and Scooch, a year older, I think helps the cause, and then Charles being new to the game a little bit in terms of how we do things, but I think Charles has done a great job establishing himself from start to finish. He's playing really well right now, and I think he's starting to let the game come to him a little bit more. He's not forcing as much action early, guys are looking for him, and I thought he made a couple of tremendous passes to start the game to get us going, so I think just, like you said, no dropoff, really. We're just continuing to get better."

On Dyshawn Pierre (12 points, 9 rebounds) and where he is despite missing the first half of the season:
"He didn't play particularly well tonight, in particular the first half, and like everybody, you don't play perfect every game, but he continues to get rebounds for us. He continues to give us big baskets, he's making all of his free throws. He didn't have it tonight from the floor, you could tell (from) his legs early in the game weren't there. I can't complain about him right now, he's playing 32, 34 minutes a game, he's giving us a lot of production."

On Dayton's travel plans and concern heading into today's game:
"We were fortunate the game was on Sunday. I guess if it would have been on Saturday and got bumped a day, it would have been a problem, but we were able to get out on Friday, we beat the storm in and we were already ready to go when we woke up and the storm was there. We didn't want to travel a whole ton on the bus to deal with it, but we did have a good workout over in White Plains at a local Life Time Fitness for one hour, which sometimes you've just got to find a site neutral and then get some work in, which I thought we did. This is the longest break we've had since pre-Christmas finals. We haven't had a week since Christmas where we haven't been on every two days or whatever, so we actually had an extra day in Dayton to prepare. We needed to be ready. I think we'll need to play against Fordham a couple of times. When you have a new staff that comes in, you've got to get adjusted to the system, our system's got to get adjusted to what they're doing, but we did some good things on offense and defense and I think as we move forward, it's just two down on the road and now we get to go back home, and just got to be ready to continue and get back to work, and get better."

On biggest key to today's game:
"I think the biggest key to the game was the start to the game. I thought our guys got off to a great start, and if you watched us in the first half, we were very comfortable moving and sharing the ball. In the second half, I thought their zone got us a little bit stale. We turned it over in the first four minutes of the second half, which sort of knocked us back, but I thought we made timely plays. We held a double-figure lead pretty much the whole game and to be able do those things, we played a lot of guys, I thought, and some guys stepped up. Some guys aren't going to play particularly well every night, we need other guys to step up. I just thought Charles and Scooch were great, and I thought Kyle was very good as well in his minutes, he had eight rebounds and six assists, so you can't really complain about him. We need all hands on deck as we keep moving forward, and I think this week at home will knock us to the halfway point in the league, so it's amazing that we're already almost in February."

On fan presence:
"Well, usually when we play up here, we get a pretty good attendance. We have a lot of alums up here, they look forward to us coming up. I think the snow probably cut the attendance for both programs probably in half just due to the weather, but this is one of the places that we normally go where our following is heard, and I think it was heard well again tonight."