Oklahoma State University Athletics
Postgame Quotes
February 14, 2001 | Cowboy Basketball
Feb. 14, 2001
OSU Coach Eddie Sutton
I don't think that we have played better defense than we did tonight in several years. We had a great scouting report by Sean (Sutton). He really had them pegged, and our guys executed it. Cutting down on the amount of three-point shooting is a major key when you play Oklahoma and not letting them have a bunch of treys. We played certainly the best game that we played all season. When you look at the stats sheet, we shot over 50 percent and out rebounded them like we did and only turned it over 11 times. When you add to that the great defensive effort, that was probably about as well as we can play. I'm very proud of our team.
On Victor Williams
I've seen Victor go off like that in practice before. Last year, I
remember two or three times when Doug (Gottleib) was covering him where he
would go off. Any time a player has the same number of points as the
opposition at halftime, he's having a pretty good night.
On holding OU to 18 points in the first half
As I said, Sean looked at a lot of film, and they run a great half-court
offense. If you don't execute defensively just right, they're going to
break people open. We've worked on it defensively. Our quickness is one
thing that we were concerned about. If you try to fight over the top of a
screen and get caught in the traffic jam, you leave all of those three-point
shooters open. We piggyback the man, and when he comes off of that screen
and catches a ball, we're right there with them and he doesn't have time to
shoot the basketball. We also did a good job in the first half of keeping
them off the free throw line. They're one of the outstanding free-throw
shooting ball clubs in America. We really took them out of their half-court
offense and they had to go one-on-one.
Oklahoma State Locker Room Quotes
Forward Andre Williams
On beating Oklahoma
It feels really good to beat the Sooners, especially by 28 points. It's a
great feeling ? unbelievable. I really don't know what happened, we just
jumped on them from the start and kept them down the whole game. It is just
unreal.
On the crowd
The crowd was great. Every play we made they were loud. They helped take OU
out of their offense as much as we did. Oklahoma couldn't hear, they were
getting frustrated because of the crowd noise. It was great out there.
Guard Maurice Baker
On beating the Sooners
It feels really good, we had lost two in a row in conference play and
tonight's win is a real confidence builder, beating them like that. The
crowd was loud all night long. Sometimes we couldn't call our plays because
the crowd was so loud. We had a lot of energy from the crowd tonight, so it
was a lot of fun.
On the defense
Coach has been telling us all week that we had to play better defense. They
(coaches) have been getting on me because I've been running into screens, so
I tried to play good defense tonight. I don't want the coaches to be on my
back tomorrow.
Victor Williams
On getting his shot going
My first shot kind of felt good today. The basket just kept getting bigger
and bigger for me and I just kept knocking them down. My teammates kept
giving me the ball.
On this being a destiny game
It was one of those destiny games. I think that me and Melvin (Sanders) and
Andre (Williams) have to take a little pressure off Fred (J?nz?n) and
Maurice (Baker). Coming down the stretch, so many teams are keying on those
guys. We have got to be able to hit 13 or 14 points apiece. Not apiece, but
help them out a little bit and take a little bit of pressure of them.
Fredrik Jonzen
On Victor Williams
We have been seeing Victor doing this in practice a lot. He has been having
a few games like this, but not quite like this. You knew that every time he
put up a shot it was going in. You can tell by the way that Victor played
that he has his confidence going.
On getting back into a routine
I think it meant a lot. We had to get back and have a good two or two and a
half hour practice and work hard. We did that Monday and Tuesday. That is
part of the routine that we have to get back into. We played better tonight.
I think we had more energy , of course, because of the home crowd.
Oklahoma Coach Kelvin Sampson
Hats off to the Cowboys. I thought that they did a great job. It was an extremely, extremely important game for Oklahoma State. They played like a team that desperately needed to win. I thought that was the best I've seen a team play against us all year, obviously. It's a tremendous atmosphere. I thought the crowd really fueled them. Their energy level was extremely high.
On his team's preparation level
Sometimes when you go on a winning streak like we've been on, winning seven
games in a row and four straight on the road, there is a tendency for kids
to start reading the press clippings and start thinking they're a little bit
better than they actually are. I thought that tonight we kind of lost our
identity and our poise. We've been a good team. The thing that you have to
do as a coach in these situations is understand that. After we beat Texas
Tech last Wednesday night, I looked at our schedule. I said, ?We've got to
go to Texas and to O-State. That's two tough games. If you get a split out
of those two games, you're lucky.' Well, we got a split. We won at Texas,
and we lost at O-State. That's not bad.
On what the loss means to his team
Obviously tonight hurts, but we play them again in Norman. We've got to go
win at home Saturday against Baylor, so I'm not going to overreact to this
just like we didn't overreact to some of those losses early in the season.
We got beat tonight by a very, very good team. I thought Oklahoma State
played well.
Oklahoma Player
Guard J.R. Raymond
I thought that we needed to get deeper to start our offense. Execution is the key. A lot more teams now will push us to run our offense further away >from the basket. We tried to counter that by opening up the floor like we did at the end of the game, and by just using dribble penetration.
I just thought that they played a good game. They're in the Big 12 Conference and I wish them luck making it to the tournament.
I was concerned about Mo Baker and Fredrik Jonzen.
I can't say that their defense caused us to play the way that we did. But we didn't execute. It's not good when you put those two things on top of each other. We played real soft. You have received this message as part of the OSU men's basketball mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a message to Mike Noteware (michaen@okstate.edu).
