Oklahoma State University Athletics
Texas Postgame Quotes
March 04, 2016 | Cowboy Basketball
Oklahoma State head coach Travis Ford
 On fatigue setting in:
"It's fatigue not just from the game. It's fatigue from everything this team has been through. You've got a guy banking in free throws for them and we can't make them. They're throwing in last second shots. I'm not trying to make excuses, but we're just struggling offensively. We're searching and trying to figure it out. I don't know how man one-and-ones we missed. Probably three or four and that's eight points you could've had right there and you don't get any. Our defense is good. Holding a team to 62 points should be good enough, but our offense is just... Every game we'll have one or two guys step up and the next game it'll be two different guys. We haven't had a game in a long, long time where four or five guys are making shots and putting the ball in the hole. At this level, your defense can be great, but you have to have some offensive production and our offensive production isn't there right now."
 On Leyton Hammonds:
"He played well and he played hard. It kept us in the game really. We just couldn't get much flow offensively from anybody else. The defense was pretty good; it's just our offense is putting so much pressure on our offense and our team. The guys are fighting, anybody would say that, but we're just challenged offensively. We're challenged with all the injuries and it's not just the guys who aren't playing. It's the guys who are out there and are banged up. We're just having a tough time getting into the flow of things out there offensively."
 On starting the five seniors:
"I thought they did a good job in there. They scored a couple of points and got a couple stops. We were happy for them and we were all happy they were going to get a chance to hear their name's called in the starting lineup and I thought they did a great job in there."
 On the Big 12 Tournament:
"That's what we have to look forward to at this point. We've put all our eggs into Kansas City. We've got a couple of days off here and hopefully we can recharge. As I mentioned, we're a banged up, fatigued, run down basketball team and we need a couple of days off to recharge heading into Kansas City. We've been over it with our team; we know the odds and the adversity we've been through, but we do have the tournament to look forward to in Kansas City."
 On the pride the team has in its effort:
"We're fighting an uphill battle and that's the bottom line. We're putting ourselves in positions where we're challenged offensively and challenged shooting the ball and it's tough when you go through those long scoring droughts and we've got to find a way to fix that before Kansas City. We've played very good defense and we're competing, but we're just going through too many scoring droughts. Tonight was mostly about free throws. We kept missing free throws and it was deflating and it just went against us a little bit."
 On the team's slump at the end of the game:
"You've just got to make plays. Leyton [Hammonds] was out there making a lot of plays. I didn't get many touches because they were face guarding me, but Leyton stepped up in that aspect. We've just got to run our offense and guys have got to get to the basket. We got some early fouls and we got into the bonus early, but we didn't execute in the last 4 minutes very well. That came back to bite us."
 On Senior Night festivities:
"It meant the world to me to be able to get out one last time with these guys. To be able to get out there and just give it 110 percent regardless of the outcome. I was happy to be able to go out there with the group of guys I've been fighting with all year and to have my family here who came up from Atlanta, that was a good thing for me. It's bitter sweet in a way, but just being able to go out there and play hard for my school one last time gave me a lot of intensity."
 On his thoughts after the final buzzer:
"I just honestly wish we would've won the game. No more thoughts than that. It was our last home game but now we know what we've got to work on going into the Big 12 Tournament."
 On his takeaways from his time at OSU:
"I came here as a boy and I'm leaving a man in different aspects. I've grown into a leader more this year than I think I had when I first came here. I just learned the game more coming from the junior college level. Just the people I've met and the relationships I've built are the takeaways from this experience and actually this being my first year that I've been at a school for two years, so I'm just grateful to be able to meet the people that I did and to be able to put that jersey on every night and play at the level I did."
 On not getting any shots off late in the game:
"They switched off and put [Demarcus] Holland, a quicker guard, on me. For most of our offense I was pretty much playing out on the perimeter, so it kind of made it a little tough for me, but I give them all the credit. They played terrific defense, especially at the end of the game."
 On rebounding from an injury:
"It was honestly just rest and staying in the training room with my trainer and working on it. Honestly, getting lost in the game just kind of made the pain go away. Once I get in there and just start focusing on my aspects and what I have to do kind of makes me not worry about the pain anymore. It was good to see my first shot go down, but just going out there and playing hard makes the pain go away."
 Texas head coach Shaka Smart
 On Kerwin Roach Jr.:
"He did what he's been getting better and better at doing all season long. He hit a couple of really big outside shots and he's been really good at slashing and making plays and he finished them off. So that was huge for us because we had some guys who didn't particularly have their best offensive games, so for him to step up and give us 15 points is really big."
 On his first regular season in the Big 12:
"It was hard. It's a really good league. We were sitting there at 1-2 on our way back from Ft. Worth after losing to TCU, Cameron Ridley had just gotten hurt, we weren't feeling particularly great about ourselves as a team, so these guys really responded and played well. Obviously there's some games that we'd like to have back. We'd love to play the last three minutes at Oklahoma again, we'd love to have some our other games back, but it doesn't work that way and I'm sure a lot of the teams in the conference could say that, too. Our guys have made progress, we've had some really big wins and now it's about making sure we go up to Kansas City playing our best basketball."
 Texas' Kerwin Roach Jr.
 On his play tonight:
"All I know is that I had my team behind me. My team was cheering me on and it made me keep going. Coach Smart kept saying keep attacking, so it gave me a lot of confidence and made me go."
 Texas' Shaquille Cleare
 On his play tonight:
"I got some good looks inside early, but on a few of my shots I was fading away. Coach told me to go through the guys' chest and I was happy really because I got some good looks and shots and I think I had a pretty decent night and I did what I had to do for us to get the win."
