Oklahoma State Men's Basketball Postgame Quotes

Dec. 15, 1999

OSU Coach Eddie Sutton

"Defensively, overall, we played okay. The beginning was just sloppy. Our offense, we turned the ball over too many times. It's one thing when the defense forces turnovers, but too many of our turnovers were unforced. We just made bad decisions with the basketball. We looked more like a team that had just come out of finals. I've had teams do that. Overall, the defense was all right. The offense was just spotty. The turnovers are what really jump out at you.

"I thought Montonati really played well the first half with the exception of missing some easy shots. We missed 10 shots right underneath the basket. They weren't 10 possessions. Some of them were where a guy got the ball back and missed a second opportunity, but we missed a lot of easy shots right underneath. The first half, if Brian hadn't missed those shots, I thought he really played well. He had 11 points and five rebounds at halftime.

"Mason played well both halves. His intensity showed up. I think that's what disappoints me sometimes because that's why we play in spurts. We lose some of that intensity and get careless offensively and have some defensive breakdown. Andre (Williams) came in, and for a freshman, I thought he put some pretty good numbers up just playing 20 minutes."

On playing UNLV

"Saturday will be a pretty good barometer of where we are because UNLV is really a good basketball team. I think after we play them we'll have a better feel for where we are. All of these teams, we've scheduled some of them, and like this team, I thought they would be a lot stronger than what they are."

On beating the press

"That was good. That was the first time this year that anybody has really pressed us. They've got good athletes. They had some quickness out there. That may have disrupted us some offensively. I thought Doug (Gottlieb) probably struggled harder tonight than I'd seen him, as far as his decision making and turnovers."

Oklahoma State Players

Forward Desmond Mason

On Andre Williams' performance (11 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks)
"I think Andre played a great game. That's what we need out of Andre every night. I told him in the locker room that he needs to come out and play like this every night. He's past the nervous stage and past the freshman stage, so now it's time to grow up and be a complete player. I think tonight he really did that. This is what we need from him going into conference play because he's going to be a big factor to our team. He's a defensive presence. He rebounds and runs hard. If he does those things every night, we'll get a lot of wins."

On Williams making him remember when he was a freshman
"Actually, I can -- just a little bit raw, running fast and jumping at everything. That's what I did as a freshman. Over the years, Coach has told me to slow my game down. That comes from learning the game. He's going to be the same way. Down the road, he's going to be a really good player."

On his 7-of-9 performance
"I put myself in positions -- running the floor hard and Doug (Gottlieb) kicking the ball to me. He really distributed the ball well tonight. I was working on my shooting all week. It was just the fact of jumping up, knocking them down and having confidence. I think tonight it felt good."

On the upcoming three-game road stretch
"UNLV's going to be a really hard game. Washington's going to be a good game. Going into New Orleans (against LSU) is going to be a really good game. I think for now, we have to get our heads screwed on. We can't do some of the things we did tonight, or we're going to lose on the road. It's just going to happen. We have to play solid. We have to finish a complete game. We have to play defense for 40 minutes. I think we're still learning as a team and everyone's growing together. Even though we have seven seniors, we still learn every day. I think that's what's going on. We have a chance to be a really good team down the road."

Oklahoma State Locker-Room Quotes

Glendon Alexander

On his second-half flurry
"I had some good looks in the second half and I hit the shots. When I come in, my first intention is to shoot the ball. I'm in a groove. I've got to knock down the shot that I'm supposed to. I try and bring energy to the game but tonight we really didn't need it. It's hard to come into a game when it's already out of reach. We played pretty well tonight, our team had some breakdowns, but other than that we really played together."

Brian Montonati

On getting six steals
"I didn't really play very well tonight, but loose balls just seemed to bounce my way a little bit. I guess it showed up on the stats sheet in steals. Overall, I think we played pretty suspect on defense, but Andre (Williams) stepped up and played pretty tough. He had a double-double and is good for our future."

On his first-half performance
"I missed a lot of easy shots in the first half, and I should have ended up with a lot more points. I continued to work the offensive glass and I got of couple of my own shots and tipped them in. I finished with 11 points, I think. I just kept running the floor hard and rebounding."

Alcorn State Coach Davey L. Whitney

"You don't expect to beat a very fine defensive ball club when you have 28 turnovers and you miss 13 free throws. It's amazing to me how you make a chest pass and you have two or three picked off and then it doesn't come to mind that you have to make the bounce pass. I think we got caught up in that situation.

"It could have been a different ball game if we made our free throws and we didn't make the turnovers. That's the way the game goes.

"They've got a very good ball club. They've got a nice physical ball club, a good shooting ball club. When you play the No. 14 team in the nation, as I told our kids in the dressing room, think about this: how good can you be when you don't miss 13 free throws and make 28 turnovers."

On having more turnovers than points in the first half
"We hit a span there where we didn't score for six or seven minutes. I thought our young kids who came in the ball game did a much better job than the ones that we started. We're going to reassess our personnel a little bit because we're going to have to get it done the way we want it done. We didn't get it done tonight the way that we want it done. We practice on their offense and their defense and then we do just the opposite.

"We've got to make some critical decisions on that, but there's no disgrace in losing to a ball club of this caliber because they're going to go a long way this year. We're going into our conference play, and it's going to be easier. It won't be really easy, but it will be easier than it has been. We've used these ball games to help our team grow in experience and execution. It was a good lesson for us tonight."

Alcorn State Players

Center Walter Harper

Overall thoughts on the game
"Basically, we just had too many turnovers. I think we committed too many floor errors and we were throwing the ball away when the pressure got tight on us. They moved the ball around pretty well and they were hitting the open shots and we gave up too many open shots."

On what they can take from this game
"If we can play with the fourteenth-ranked team in the nation, we can pretty much play with anybody. We need people to step up and play hard."

On his team's poor free throw shooting
"We just have to take our time and knock them down. We just have to go to practice and work harder on them."