Postgame Quotes
Feb. 16, 2013
Kansas 73, Texas 47
Feb. 16, 2013
Postgame Quotes
Kansas head coach Bill Self
On the team’s overall performance:
“It was a good night. We didn’t score the ball in the first half at all. We played good and tried hard, but we didn’t score. We got nine offensive rebounds and came away with two points. A majority of the rebounds you get offensively, you are going to try and shoot and they are in close, so that wasn’t very good. We defended great in the first half. Of course they missed shots, but we still defended them. In the second half the lid came off a little bit, but it was a balanced performance, not anything exceptional offensively, but defensively we were terrific.”
On Kansas’ stifling defensive performance:
“I don’t know if we have ever had back-to-back possessions with a shot clock violation when the other team isn’t stalling the ball. I thought Jeff (Withey) was terrific and Travis (Releford) got us off to a good start. Elijah (Johnson) was more aggressive on offense. It was one of those good solid games, nothing special, but one of those games where we are happy to get a win. It was a great atmosphere with Gameday and it sets the table for a huge game down in Stillwater.”
On Jeff Withey breaking the Big 12 blocked shots record:
“It is amazing what Jeff has done in a year and a half. He has a chance to get about 30 more blocks over the course of the rest of the season to distance himself. I am really happy for him and he played very well tonight.”
On Mario Chalmers:
“He is more than a guy that hit the biggest shot in the history of our program. He is a terrific player and a great ambassador. Very few people have that boyish grin, but he was the orneriest guy we had and he was an assassin on the court. He has done great things in the pros and we are so happy for him and proud of him. This fell over NBA All-Star Weekend, so you get Mario and the twins (Marcus and Markieff Morris) and T-Rob (Thomas Robinson) and Ty (Tyshawn Taylor) and I think Nick (Collison) may have been here and some other guys back like Xavier (Henry). There was a great group of guys sitting behind the bench. That team behind the bench, I guarantee could have beaten anyone in America.”
On Tyler Self’s layup:
“That was a hard shot, but if he wouldn’t have gotten fouled, it probably wouldn’t have had any chance to go in. The guy probably fouled it in, but he was pretty happy afterwards. The thing I like most about that with all those guys, not just Tyler, but Evan (Manning), Niko (Roberts), Christian (Garrett) of whoever, the team is so happy when those guys have success. That will be a special moment for Niko who scored and of course for Tyler who scored on Gameday. I will probably hear at home how he needs to probably start getting more playing time now.”
On Kansas’ game against Oklahoma State on Wednesday:
“I’m sure it will be a packed house (on Wednesday). That place deserves to have packed crowds. Hopefully we will get a lot of Jayhawks down there watching, but they are good and we certainly screwed it up when we lost to them and then went down to TCU and didn’t play well and lost and put ourselves behind the eight ball. We still control it and we still have to go down and play probably as good as we have played away from home all year long to get away with a win. The guys will be jacked to play and we will be excited about it. We have them on Wednesday and then we have another huge weekend next weekend when we celebrate our 115th year of basketball with our reunion, so this should be a fun week for us.”
Kansas senior guard Elijah Johnson
On the biggest key to turning things around:
“At one point in time, we were playing for everybody but ourselves. Time was passing, it was passing so fast and we were having fun but not the kind of fun we wanted to have. We had a couple of meetings and checked ourselves in the mirror. We brought different energy to practice, even more than we usually do. We started to enjoy each other more. With those losses, we showed how much more we care for each other; we don’t like to see each other hurt like that. We tried to nip that in the bud.”
On how important it is for the team to have fun while playing:
“When you are having fun, you don’t have to listen to the scouting report. When you are having fun, you don’t have to know the plays. When you are having fun, you don’t have to know anything; you just have to go play. That is what we are doing right now. Everybody is just playing; nobody is thinking. Everybody is just going after what they think belongs to them.”
On Jeff Withey:
“We (Kansas’ men’s basketball team) had a couple of conversations in the huddles today about silly fouls that we make. I don’t necessarily want to give up our game plan, but at the same time, we know how to use Jeff (Withey). Right now, we are not doing it like we want to. We can help Jeff and ourselves. Having Jeff down there is such a big help; to come down in transition the second half and be able to just throw it over the top to him. It’s almost impossible to not be able to make that pass, and you know you have almost an 80 percent chance of him finishing it, or getting fouled. I think frustration sets in on other teams when they know they can’t shoot a regular shot, but have to detour it (the shot) all the time. You can’t practice for that so we definitely appreciate Jeff and everything he brings to the table for us.“
On what went in to making the `Harlem Shake’ video:
“I’m not big on social-networking. That was all Justin Wesley. At first, I wasn’t big on doing it; I’ll step out of my comfort zone a little bit and I think everyone else felt the same way. When Justin kind of forced us to do it, it turned into us just having so much energy yesterday and then we went into practice and it just carried over. We just started to realize there is not too much time left to enjoy it. Right now, it is something we can look back on and say `Hey, when we were going through a bad time, this is when it started to get fun’ and we have a video now to show it.”
Kansas senior guard Travis Releford
On how good the Jayhawks were defensively against Texas:
“I think we were great. We held them to 11 (points) at the last four minute mark (in the first half) and then we let them get on a little run. Other than that, I felt like both halves we did a great job of making them uncomfortable on the defensive end.”
On the importance of the next few days prior to leaving for Stillwater:
“They are very important. Oklahoma State is a tough team. They came here and got us. We know we have to be on our game. We need to go down there and play like we are supposed to.”
Kansas senior center Jeff Withey
On what setting the Big 12 Conference career blocked shots record means to him:
“It definitely means something to me. I put a lot of hard work into getting it. I have a lot more games to play. Hopefully, I can put some distance on it and make sure it doesn’t get touched for 20 years or so.”
Texas head coach Rick Barnes
On Texas’ offensive struggles:
“We missed a lot of shots that were there, but then I thought we started the game not doing what we wanted to do defensively. We went after a couple guys and thought we put fouls on them that weren’t called. You can’t coach making shots. Guys have to make it. You give a team like Kansas breathing room and they can be loose and free, they make shots. All the things we talked about that we wanted to do, we didn’t do. I think we have to give them credit with their defense, but we had a lot of looks that we would have liked to make, but you have to make them.”
On Texas’ play overrall:
“You saw at the end, they wouldn’t quit. Myke Kabongo wouldn’t come out of the game, I wouldn’t take him out. He has sat all year. I’ll let him play as long as he wants to play. Him and Demarcus (Holland) and those guys, they are not going to stop playing. If you would have seen timeouts and huddles and seen the talking it makes you proud. We’re not going to quit. We will make some people’s lives difficult down the stretch.”
On Texas’ defense:
“They got to the rim a lot because we didn’t do what we wanted to do. I think what happens when you get down like that, guys get away mentally from what we are trying to get done. We had some great practices leading into this, but you have to give them credit. The way we started defensively was not what we wanted to do.”
Texas freshman forward Connor Lammert
On playing in Allen Fieldhouse:
“I think after a while we got used to it, but at the end of the day it came down to the 10 guys on the floor. We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well, at all, and we got some shots that we were looking for, but as far as the fans go, they were great. It just came down to us.”
On what the team focused on as they continued to fall behind:
“Staying together. In timeouts we know we have to search for the right shots. I think we came out 1-for-8 from the three and we had an emphasis on getting the inside shots more but the outside shots just kept getting open and we just put nothing down.”
On if it is tough staying positive in games like this:
“Sure it is, with the crowd and everything, but we’ve been in this situation before and we knew we had to stay together.”
Texas freshman forward Ioannis Papapetrou
On the difference between this game and Texas’ game against Kansas in Austin earlier this season:
“It is just different playing at home I think. They came to our place, we played a really good game for about 56 minutes and the last four minutes of the game we basically gave the game away.”
On the team’s shooting:
“I don’t know I would have to go back and look but I have a pretty good feeling we had a lot of open shots. We missed a lot of them and when we miss shots and don’t get defensive rebounds then you put on your defense. When they start making shots and feel confident and the crowd gets going it was really tough to stop them.”
