Texas Postgame Quotes

Oklahoma State Head Coach Travis Ford

Opening Statement:
"Congrats to Texas. They played a good game. They jumped on us in the first half and went out up 15 at halftime. I just don't think that our team played with much emotion. We were kind of just trying to tread water in the first half. We never made a run. We never had anything positive happen in the first half for us, nothing to get us going, because we weren't. We weren't firing on all cylinders by any stretch, for whatever reason. Second half, for the last ten or twelve minutes of the game, we decide to wake up a little bit, compete, have a little passion and a sense of urgency, and made it a basketball game. I have to give Texas credit, they played well from the get go."

On the competitiveness of the team:
"I am not questioning their competitiveness at all, what-so-ever, because it can happen, these are human beings in there. We don't want it to happen. We try to prevent it. We do everything in our power to get your team ready, but I have done this a very long time and I have seen this happen. I don't like it and I am not happy with it. My team in the locker room knows that right now. They understand, you are down 23 and then ten minutes later you are down three. What is this difference? It is just a sense of urgency. We just didn't have it since the beginning. I am disappointed that we didn't have it. I haven't seen this necessarily be a trend. Now, there has been a trend of us getting down and coming back. I can't count on my fingers how many layups we missed the first half and that's deflating, that wears on you. I know they scored 40 points in the first half, way too many, especially for our defense. We are pretty good defensively, normally. Our numbers speak for themselves, but it was more about our offense than our defense. Their 40 points came from us just not putting the ball in the hole. When you are not into it the way you need to be mentally, then you are not where you need to be, then that's when you don't get those bounces. Things don't go your way and that was a reflection of it. They made a bunch of threes in the first half. We hung around them for a while and we kept telling our guys in the timeouts, we are hanging around somehow, but then they went on a run and started making threes. Our offense just couldn't keep up in the first half because for whatever reason, we couldn't put the ball in the hole."

Sophomore Guard Tavarius Shine

On the slow start of the team:
"We just weren't playing hard enough in the first half. We stepped it up in the second half, but that really was our downfall. That's what really predicted the game. We didn't come out right in the first half."

On catching fire this game after a tough season:
"Yeah, I was a little pissed off with the way I had been playing this season. I feel like I need to do more for my team, not just scoring, but I need to bring a better presence. So I came into this a little pissed off."

Junior Forward Leyton Hammonds

On channeling the intensity from late in the game:
"We have focused on it in practice. We a high start early in practice hoping that a high start would show up in games. We just have to play like we are down 30 from tip off when the clock says 00:00. You just play like you are already down and hopefully that will help us come out to a quicker start."

On when they believed they could come back:
"Once we started getting on that run and we started cutting that lead down. When we got it under 10, I felt like we could. That was our whole plan, to just get it under 10 and just keep playing until we eventually came back. It didn't happen, but we felt confident that we were just going to keep pushing and pushing. Just like you said in the beginning, that slow start just doomed us."

Oklahoma State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Leyton Hammonds

Tavarius Shine

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