Oklahoma State University Athletics
Postgame Quotes vs USF
December 05, 2012 | Cowboy Basketball
Dec. 5, 2012
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Postgame Quotes
Oklahoma State vs USF
Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012
Oklahoma State Head Coach Travis Ford
Opening statement
"The game was played pretty much how I fully anticipated it being played. We watched a lot of film on these guys this year and last year. Most of their games are played grinding it out. That's a really great defensive team we played. The pace was the way they wanted it most of the night, but we don't really mind playing that way. We'd like it to go a little faster, but the Tennessee game was simliar to this, so we had a little experience. I kept telling the team in every timeout that whoever's defense is better tonight is who is going to win. This is a defensive battle and whoever is going to out-rebound the other team and give up the fewest second shots will win. Whoever was going to give up second shots wasn't going to be successful because shots were hard to come by--good shots were hard to come by. We've concentrated the past two days on rebounding. We did a lot of things to improve our rebounding. From drills, to watching film. Just a lot of things to correct some of the things I thought hurt us at Virginia Tech. The offense is still not clicking. We forced some things we shouldn't have forced, but I credit that more to their defense than us just running bad offense. We have to get better offensively, and we will, but if we continue to play well defensively, and bottle up what we did rebounding tonight, we have a chance to be an OK team."
"It was just one of those nights. When you get in foul trouble in a game like this, when you have to sit out, you are not going to get in a flow — it's impossible. If you aren't able to stay out there for an extended period of time, get a sweat going and get a feel for their defense, it's hard to get going. He had to sit out in both halves. He only played 22 minutes, which is not very many for him. That was it. It's hard to get in a flow in a game like that. It's very difficult."
On Philip Jurick's performance
"What I loved about it, is you should have seen the guys in the locker room--how excited they are for him. We went into this game trying to get him the ball more. We wanted him to score a little bit more. You saw us feeding him the ball a little bit more. We actually ran some plays for him, which I hadn't done all year, but we actually ran two or three plays for him. We're trying to build his confidence up, because I tell him he does lack confidence. We believe in him more than he believes in himself. We've challenged him in rebounding as far as how to rebound and what kind of rebounds we need for him, and he responded. When we can get a performance from a big man like that, because we have some of the best guards in the country, I believe, then that just helps our team be that much better."
On Jurick's putback dunk
"Yeah, I designed that put-back for him. Wow, that was impressive. That was very impressive. After the injury he had, him just being out there is impressive to me. That's something we haven't seen in practice or anything. He usually just lays them up in practice. Even in drills he usually doesn't dunk--it takes him a while to get warmed up. So, no we had not seen them.
On Jurick playing without getting into foul trouble
"This was a different game. They didn't throw to his man very much at all. Most of his stuff came from helping off weak-side and he was never put into a one-on-one position, which normally, that's when he can get a few fouls, but the way they ran their offense, he wasn't involved on the ball a lot. Most of his stuff came off the ball."
Oklahoma State senior center Philip Jurick
On his improvement this season
"Just the offseason. I lost a lot of weight. Knowing that my teammates have a lot of confidence in me helped out a lot. The injury kind of helped me regain focus. The team that we have this year helps, too."
On his confidence playing down low, despite USF's size
"I felt pretty good down low. Coach (Ford) told me before the game to be more confident on the offensive end, and I think that goes a long ways. I just need to not rush it, and see what I have."
Oklahoma State junior guard Markel Brown
On the team's defense
"That's one of our main goals every time we step out on the court. We just want to go out there and focus on our defense, no matter if our shots are falling for us or not. Defense will win games for us. That's a big focus for this team."
On bouncing back from the Virginia Tech game
"We were definitely disappointed with the second half of that last game. We feel like we beat ourselves in that game, giving up too many offensive rebounds and things like that. We got back in practice, and we worked on rebounding more. It's getting better for us."
On the team's rebounding tonight
"We were pretty big on the boards, especially Phil (Jurick) with 14 and Kamari (Murphy) stepping in with eight. Marcus had six. That's what we need, night in and night out."
USF head coach Stan Heath
Opening statement
"I thought Oklahoma State really bounced back from their last game. You can tell they played really hard and beat us in 50/50 play, especially in the first half. There were a couple of key plays in the second half where I thought we could get a score and it seemed like we would turn it over or miss a shot and next thing you know, they would hit a three on us. But they are a good team, very athletic, they have some weapons out there and they had some guys step up, more than normal. [Philip] Jurick controlled the middle, really handled the glass extremely well. [Michael] Cobbins got some interior scores as well. I thought between Jurick and Cobbins, and the three guys that were playing up high were really the difference in the game. The production we got between the zero points and five rebounds, they got 13 points and 16 rebounds. Something we have to get better at is that we just couldn't make shots tonight. We had some looks, I think they were good defensively and I thought we got some looks but it just didn't go down. Some layups around the rim, some transitions that we got nothing and some good looks that just didn't go down. You can't do that against a good team especially on the road."
On his team's performance
"We didn't keep pace. They scored and we didn't. It kept going that way, we went on a three or four minute slump and didn't get many points. The lack of an interior game has harmed us a little bit. We have a stretch like that and we want to throw the ball inside and we just don't have that presence right now. Nothing really changed, they went on a stretch and we didn't. They had a nice run, that's college basketball. A team goes on a run and if it happens once or twice then it's the difference in the game."
"His physical presence rebounding and he got a few shots and a few scores inside really helped them a lot in this game. If he continues to do that then that's a big help to their basketball team."
On USF's defense
"This is a normal game for us defensively. If you look at their numbers, team's usually shoot 39 percent against us, they shot 40 percent. We don't give up a lot of easy baskets and we try to make sure teams don't get in the paint too much. It is what it is. They are a good defensive team and we are a good defensive team, they just score the ball better than we do."
On his starting lineup changing from game to game
"It's not as bad as what it appears. We had a couple games where Acy (Anthony Collins) didn't play or the lineup would've been the same. Really, [Victor] Rudd, [Toarlyn] Fitzpatrick and Collins are staples. Noriega has been playing pretty soon [into the game]. It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't like that the rest of the season. I'm looking for somebody at that five position to give me something. That's kind of where we are right now."
On Musa Abdul-Aleem
"For the short amount of time he showed a lot of things. He got to bust out and got to the basket strong. I wanted to get him out there and get his feet wet and he can certainly play a bigger role for us as time goes on."
On Anthony Collins vs Marcus Smart
"If I wasn't coaching the game I would've loved to see him and [Marcus] Smart go at each other. That was a really good match-up between two really good guards, but he's crafty and he's clever and I thought they jammed the lane up and made him change some shots early, but he keeps coming at you and he did get in there and made some things happen. But he's our guy, he makes us go."
On what he learned about his team
"What I saw from my team was good, what I saw was what I wanted see. Are we going to be tough on the road or are we going to play tough and still guard people? Those are the intangible things that we want to see as a coach. Now we need to get in the gym now and execute some of those shots. If you go into someone's backyard and you hold them to 40 percent shooting and 31 percent from the three-point line then you have a legitimate chance to win, you just have to score a lot better. A lot of times when teams go on the road they don't bring their defense, we brought our defense, I was pleased tonight."
