Grizzlies 109, Wizards 97
Q. How do you assess that game?
BRIAN KEEFE: I've got to take it on me. I didn't have the group ready to play from the start. We had a terrible first half. We weren't ready to go. We had been trending in the right direction of starting games well and playing hard, and I didn't have them ready to go in the right place mentally, physically.
We turned it around in the second, but we started too late.
Q. Do you feel like your team took them lightly?
BRIAN KEEFE: No, no, absolutely not. We just weren't ready, and that's on me. I've got to have the group ready to roll, ready to play. They're a good team, and we didn't overlook them, but for whatever reason, we didn't have the necessary ferocity, energy at the start of the game.
We found it in the second half, but too little, too late.
Q. Shouldn't the effort come in large part from the veteran players, the guys who have been there before, to begin a game like this?
BRIAN KEEFE: We've got to own it. It's a collective thing. Like I said, I'll be the one because I'm the leader of the group. I'll take it myself for sure, but we have to own it as a collective unit that we have to be better, and we're looking forward to our next game in Houston.
Q. Obviously I know Marvin, Richaun both out, good defensive rebounders, but even with them out, were the defensive glass problems uncharacteristic?
BRIAN KEEFE: Yeah, like I said, mentally we weren't prepared to put bodies on them. When they did it in the second half, they still got some cheap ones, but we were much more ready to box out and do it as a group, and when we did, we put a run on.
Credit to Eugene; when he came in the game, he brought some physicality to the game and really helped us, but we didn't do it for long enough, and we didn't do it to start the game.
It's hard to play uphill like we did tonight.
Q. Given how well that quintet started in the fourth, I think it was Jared, Jordan, Geno, then PBJ, what prompted you to go back to a couple of your starters there midway through the fourth quarter when those five guys seemed to have it rolling?
BRIAN KEEFE: I thought those guys got us back in the game. I trust our starters. They've won a bunch of games. Trust all of our players. It was just their time to come back in. I would do it again. But give those guys a lot of credit for getting us back in the game for sure.
Q. You talked about the effort and everything; was there anything in particular you'd change offensively or defensively in the second half that made that difference?
BRIAN KEEFE: We changed our mentality. We came out and played with an aggressive mindset, and we didn't have that at the start. Again, that's on me, and you could see that made the difference in the second half. We needed to do that for 48 minutes, and we did not.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports