Oklahoma State University Athletics
Postgame Quotes vs. Washington
December 02, 2007 | Cowboy Basketball
Oklahoma State Cowboy Basketball
Postgame Quotes vs. Washington
Saturday, December 1. 2007
Oklahoma State Head Coach Sean Sutton
On the game
“I'm really pleased with my team and the way they played today. It was a great effort and a really important win. That was a good basketball team we played today. I was highly impressed with their talent and type of team they have after watching their film all week.
“I was pleased that the players responded to the work we did in practice this week and they carried it to the floor. I thought we gave a great effort at both ends of the court. The one area that I didn't get a very good job in is rebounding. But we forced 20 turnovers and really shot the ball well. Our guard play was much better when Byron (Eaton) is playing well and Nick (Sidorakis) came in and gave us great minutes. When we have solid point guard play we're a different team. That was some of our problem in Hawaii.”
On three-point shooting
“We can shoot the basketball. We just go through stretches sometimes where we don't shoot it quite as well. In Hawaii, outside the LSU game, we were in a funk the way we were shooting the ball. And it was affecting other areas of guys' game. If we took good shots over in Hawaii our shooting percentage would be a lot higher. Today we stayed aggressive and more baskets in transition than we've been getting. We shared and moved tha ball on offense and guys made their shots I thought our defensive intensity was pretty good throughout the game. It got sloppy between the seven-minute mark and three-minute mark. We gave them easy chances during that stretch. But other than that I thought we played well.”
“I talked to them at length this week about the four five-minute segments in a basketball game ... the first five minutes of the first half, the last five minutes of the first half, the first five minutes of the second half and the last five minutes of the second half. We've been getting killed during the first five minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the first half. Illinois and Marquette took it to us in the last five minutes of the first half and it changed the whole complexion of those games. Then they jumped on us the first five minutes of the second half. I thought they did a good job of listening all week to how important those segments were. Tonight we won three of them. When you work in practice you get rewarded in the games.”
Junior Guard Byron Eaton
On bouncing back from back-to-back losses at last week’s Maui Invitational
“One of the main things that (head coach Sean Sutton) preached to us this whole week was that we needed to come out and respond to the two disappointing losses that we took in Maui. Practice was just like that first week when I was a freshman. It was a lot of up-and-downs. The coaches got on us a lot more than they had. Coach (Sutton) even told us before the week, ‘I’m going to chew you guys out. No matter what, we have to get some guys better. It’s not personal, but we just have to get you guys better.’ That is what he did. Just going against each other in practice, we pushed each other a lot more. There was effort from everyone - the coaches and the players.”
On the team’s improved shooting
“Another thing that coach told us was that we need to get in the gym and shoot. Everybody shot well today because all of us were in the gym at night at one point or another this week. They just told us to shoot with confidence. Coach told us is that we need to start making teams play from behind. We are always trying to play catch up, but (having a lead) helped us out a lot...We did a much better just practicing. We did a lot of shooting in practice this week.”
Junior Guard Terrel Harris
On opening up a big lead late in the first half
“Coach (Sutton) told us to play the game in five-minute segments. The first five minutes of the first half, the last five minutes of the first half, the first five minutes of the second half, and the last five minutes of the second half. If you win all of those, then you will most likely win the game. In the last five minutes of the first half, we just really turned it on, tried to take the game to 20 points and tried to crush them.”
“We really worked on screening a lot in practice this week. That is one thing that we didn’t do very well in Maui. We just worked on a lot of movement, a lot of cuts, a lot of different things that could help our offense, and it really helped us get open shots and get our teammates open shot. We had lot of assists this game.”
Washington Head Coach Lorenzo Romar
On Oklahoma State's offensive surge to blow open the game
“We had a total collapse, offensively and defensively. They began to hit a couple threes, we lost them a couple of times and we didn't close out like we should have. We were very aware of James Anderson and the way he could shoot the basketball. We took kind of an ill-advised three-pointer right at the same time (the run started) and there we went.”
On giving Cowboys momentum and letting the crowd in the game
“Along with that momentum, the other thing that creates it (success for the other teams) is if you get good looks at the basket, eventually you're going to get into a rhythm and if we contest every shot, it's hard for teams to get into a rhythm. But we didn't do that tonight and once that happened multiple guys began to hit three point shots.”
On playing zone in the second half to slow down Oklahoma State's offense
“Temporarily it did (stop them), but then they began to find holes and rebound out of it. I think sometimes we may stay in the zone for too long and we wanted to avoid that tonight.”
On fatigue playing a factor after so much traveling recently
“It was a long day. We left at 4:30 and traveled and practiced, but other teams go through that too and you've got to be mentally tough, that's just the bottom line.
On Jon Brockman playing through pain the second half
“He's a warrior. His jaw was killing him the entire second half and he never quit.”
