Postgame Quotes
Jan. 19, 2009
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Postgame Quotes
Kansas Coach Quotes
Head Coach Bill Self
On the game overall:
“I thought we were great defensively for the majority of the game. Offensively we were fabulous for the first 12 minutes of the game. I think we had 30 points with eight left in the half or nine left in the half. The second was one of those halves where you just get through it. We played well. I really believe we’re getting better. Sherron (Collins) got us off to a great start. Marcus Morris extended the lead in the second half with a couple of three’s. Mario Little was great in the minutes he played. It was a good win. We played tough for the most part. It was even on the glass- they’re a great rebounding team. We forced a lot of turnovers the first half. In the second half we played a lot of contain defense. We trapped the post well and rotated out of it well and certainly made enough plays to come away with the win.”
On the play of junior Mario Little:
All along we said he’s a tough match-up for a four-man offensively because he can step away from the basket. He’s one of the few guys in college basketball, every team may have one, but probably doesn’t have more than one, with a good in-between game. He’s really good in the 15-foot range. Most guys are great behind the arc or take it all the way to the basket. He has that old school mid-range game. He shot the ball well. He needed to have something good happen. He was active and effective.”
On the team’s defensive performance:
“Out defense in Boulder wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as tonight. We haven’t trapped the post a lot, but we did a real good job of that. You get off to a great start like that, even though we kind of settled in, we just kind of traded baskets from that point forward, any team would be hard to beat at home when you get off to a start like that. We need to go do that on the road now.”
Kansas Player Quotes
Freshman forward Marcus Morris
On hitting two three-pointers:
“That is my spot on the court. I try to shoot at least 200 three’s and 200 pull-up jump shots before and after practice. Coach (Joe) Dooley and Coach (Danny) Manning have been staying in the gym with me to help me become a better shooter.”
On holding on to the lead:
“At halftime Coach Self talked about not giving up our lead. We let Syracuse get away from us and we had Kansas State up by a lot last week. He said that we just needed to keep pushing and keep on doing what we did in the first half. I think we really did that in the second half except for maybe the last two or three minutes.”
Sophomore Center Cole Aldrich
On the game:
“I think we did a great job tonight. We came out with a spark and had a really good run going to start the game. We just kept going at it. When balls were on the ground we were diving for it.”
On traping the post players for Texas A&M:
“It has been effective for a while. On last year’s team I learned a lot of the trapping techniques from Sasha Kaun. I hated in practice when I got trapped by Sasha because he would bull rush you into my chest. One thing we try to do this year is really try and come at our opponents hard on the trap to try to shock them and get them to throw a bad pass out. Texas A&M has some really good post players in (Chinemelu) Elonu and (Bryan) Davis and you have to respect them because they can make shots. We tried to get them out of their rhythm by trapping.”
Junior Forward Mario Little
On the goal to win the conference championship:
“We have goals to try and win the conference championship, along with making the postseason. We have goals like any other team, but we are just trying to take it one game at a time. I think by the end of the season we will be ready to compete for the conference title if we work hard everyday at practice. We should be able to play with anybody in the country by the end of the season.”
On his offensive game:
“I think I try to score in a variety of ways. I am big enough to post up some guys, but I also can step out and hit the jump shot. I feel like I am a slow small forward right now because at this point I really can’t drive past many guys. I am getting there and trying to get reps each day in practice to get back up to game speed.”
Opponent Coach Postgame Quotes
Texas A&M Head Coach Mark Turgeon
His thoughts on the game:
“It all started on the first shot. Cole Aldrich kind of whipped my guy, got the offensive rebound and threw it out to (Sherron) Collins and he hits the three. That’s just kind of the way it went. I thought KU made a lot of shots we expected them to make. I thought they were great offensively. And we turned it over too much tonight. They did a great job on Josh Carter. (Brady) Morningstar did a great job on him, so we never really got Josh going. It wasn’t one of our better nights, but I think KU had a lot to do with it.”
On his team’s effort:
“I thought at times our effort was pretty good, a lot of times I didn’t think it was great. We didn’t get many loose balls. We talked about that at halftime, we talked about it during a lot of timeouts. We had a lot of guys not play well. If you see us play all the time, we had a lot of guys not play well. I thought every loose ball in the first half, they came up with.”
On returning to Allen Fieldhouse:
“It’s good to be home. I love this place. You asked about effort, that’s the one thing I played with and my team didn’t play with it tonight so it’s a little disappointing. It’s good to see family, and it’s good just to be in this building. It makes me feel good. But obviously we didn’t perform well.”
On if it’s still surreal every time he walks into the building:
“I’ve been coming to this building since I was four or five years old. I have a lot of great memories. I saw a lot of familiar faces tonight, which makes you feel good. And this place, people always treat me well here. So I’m disappointed my team didn’t play better.”
On getting his homecoming behind him:
“Bill (Self) mentioned that the first time he took his team back to Oklahoma State, really no one else cares but you and your family. I am glad it’s behind us. Let’s hope that next time we come here we play a little bit better.”
His thoughts on KU:
“KU is KU. They are getting better. They have two really good ones. I thought (Marcus) Morris played well tonight. And Morningstar is such a big part of their team. He does a great job defensively. They were prepared, we were prepared too. I thought we had a great game plan defensively, we just didn’t execute it very well.”
