Oklahoma State University Athletics
OSU vs. Texas A&M Postgame Quotes
January 24, 2012 | Cowgirl Basketball
Jan. 24, 2012
Oklahoma State Head Coach Jim Littell
Opening statement
“I'm really, really proud of our team. I believe that we played about as good as we could play defensively. To hold a team of that caliber to 22 points in the first half, I thought it was a really good job on our players. Bill Annan's scout was really solid, and I thought our players took the scout to the game and executed really well. We're interesting. We turn it over 28 times and find a way to win. We can blow a 10-point lead quicker than anybody, but these kid's are pretty resilient. When they blew that lead and it came back, it just showed they have got a lot of fight in them. We only got up 41 shots, and you don't usually win getting up 41 shots and turn it over 28 times. I thought we made a lot of good plays, and we forced them into 26 turnovers. I just thought the defense was outstanding tonight. We're going to work on trying to get better and be more careful with the basketball.”
On Tiffany Bias
“She's growing as a player, and I think she can still get a lot better. We talk continually about cutting turnovers down to three or four, and that's something that she really wants to do. In all my years of coaching, I don't know that there have been any players that come to the gym and work harder than she does on a daily basis. I just believe that if you're going to work that hard, then good things are going to happen to you. She's disruptive defensively. She comes in and pressures in the back court. The slow press ate a lot of shot clock tonight, and that's what we were trying to do. She's very instrumental with what we do on that press.”
On Texas A&M
You take what you can get against A&M because they are so athletic. When we ran the inbounds play on a press break and threw it to Lindsey (Keller), and it went off her chest and out of bounds, I thought we were in trouble. There's just no quit to them. We entered right where we wanted to enter because Lindsey is a great free throw shooter and spends a lot of time in the gym on it. We kept the fans around. That's for sure.”
On Free Throws
“Liz Donohoe is great at the free throw line. I think she's missed one or two all year. Hopefully, that will continue. She put her head down and went to the basket. At times with A&M, you have to get out of the play and just lower your head and go to the basket. When we can go to the free throw line 21 times, it gives us a chance. On the flip side of it, we did a great job of only holding them to eight free throws.”
Tiffany Bias
On her last lay-up
“They started pressing us, so we knew once they scored that bucket they were going to try to get up and deny us, so a quick out was needed from Taylor. She's a good ball handler too so she brought it up and she saw me flying down the court. I had an open lane and three were already on the other side and I had to make a big play because the time was running down anyway.”
On the difference between last year and this year
“I think as a freshman I was thrown into it and I didn't really know what to expect from a Big 12 game. I think this year I'm more confident and I know when to read plays and I know what the plays going to develop into. I think it's just more on a confidence level and I worked really hard on my weaknesses from last year and I think I just improved over the year.”
On the win giving them confidence
“I think we already have a lot of confidence. I think this boosted it a little bit more. There's a lot more games to play. We celebrate for tonight, but tomorrow we get back to work. I think it was a good win against a ranked team and I think it shows the country that we can play with ranked teams and all the great teams out there.”
Lindsey Keller
On being a physical player
“I've worked on my game to be a lot more physical because some of the girls - they're a little bigger than me. You just have to be stronger and be solid. Defense is a big part of that and as long you can shut people down and they don't score and you only score two points you win. I feel like defense is a really big part of my game.”
On playing the defending national champions
“We were pretty hyped. We made sure that we were ready to go, that we were going to hit first and make sure that this is our court. We're going to defend our home. We shoot here all the time and there's no reason why we shouldn't have won this game.”
Texas A&M Head Coach Gary Blair
On the final shot attempt to potentially tie the game
"It was a double high post screen; we ran it to the left side where we had the screen. We got the wide open shot. We had kids in the corner for three in case we didn't have anything. We just didn't knock it down."
On OSU's defense
"They wanted it more than us. I think we played the game on reputation, not between the ears. We opened up the game with my three outside kids shooting 3-12, and the game was pretty even. All of a sudden, we think we're doing something, we're not doing anything because we wouldn't run the offense correctly to get the ball inside to take advantage. We allowed (Lindsey) Keller to be able to play just about the whole ball game because we didn't attack her enough. She's going to play bank robber defense; hands to the sky. She did a great job. She's physical; that's the way the Big 12 is. I wish I had one as physical as she is. She looked like Little Country in there. She's a good player. It's not what she scores on field goals, it's the mindset she brings to the game, the intensity, the whatever-it-takes type of attitude. That's what you've got to do to be able to win at this level, particularly when you might not have the Brittney Griners or the Odyssey Sims or the Brittany Chambers or whatever, you have to have people be hard-nosed, bring your lunch pail to work, find a way to get the job done. Right before half when they made their run, that was huge. We had a tie ball game, I think we were up by two and then tie ball game, they go on about a 10-2 run on us, or something like that, and I thought that was huge. But we fought to get back in it. Our ball under our basket, tie ball game, and our freshman throws it away. But, she has to learn. (Tiffany) Bias was a freshman last year and turned it over 12 times against us. So, she learned as a freshman, and look at her now as a sophomore."
Sydney Carter
On the final shot attempt to potentially tie the game
"We were just basically running what we'd been running all day, and I just asked for a screen from one of the bigs, but just didn't knock down the shot."
On the offensive struggles
"Us jump shooters were just giving them what they wanted. They were wanting us to take those outside shots, and we just weren't hitting them. We've had a lot of games this year we just haven't been hitting outside shots and our shooting percentage is way down this year. We just didn't do a good job of getting it in to our bigs. Once we did in the second half, it was that easy: we we're just scoring. We just did not do a good job getting it in to the post players and getting easy baskets and then kind of working it out and getting us open on the outside for us to knock down some shots. They we're contesting and packing it in, and we just have to get it in to the bigs."
