Postgame Quotes

Nov. 30, 2012

Recap | Final Stats | Notes |

Kansas Head Coach Bill Self
On Travis Releford’s Performance:
“Travis played great in the second half. I thought he played beyond awful in the first half. He played about as bad as he’s played in a few years. He finally got mad at someone, maybe it was me, and he started to attack the hole. In the second half he got a lot of easy baskets. They struggled guarding the ball and we able to get the ball into the paint 12 times from out of bounds, which was a big improvement. But we should have done it about 35 times. Travis did play a strong second half and were able to hang on and win.”

On tonight’s performance:
“We were playing without anyone guarding the ball. It’s tough to be good defensively if you don’t have anyone guarding the ball. They set a bunch of ball screens with Jeff (Withey’s) man. Jeff actually does a decent job it’s our guards that just can’t get over the screens. We are playing against quickness and that’s tough for our guards. That’s disappointing and we need to start playing zone or do something different. But the thing that really frustrates more than anything is that I just can’t believe that guys don’t like to complete. There were three loose balls and we could have dove to start the game. They ended up with six points because of that – because we are too prima donna to get our nose dirty. But we will get better, we have to learn.

“Ben has to learn that when he has four fouls and gets back in the game he can’t make the three plays that he made, because in any other game that would have caused a loss. There are a lot of things we have to learn from and hopefully we can teach them a few things from the tape. How about some of those lineups we had out there the first half? We couldn’t find anybody to get in the game that could actually be a contributor because everyone was playing so bad the last seven to eight minutes. From an execution standpoint it was all just awful. We went in at half up three and we were lucky to be there. We have a long ways to go, we need to improve. We got the win, I’m thankful for that but I don’t think anyone is leaving here feeling giddy about our performance here tonight.

On team’s inconsistency:
“We played decent. We had a chance to crack them and don’t. They come back and we kind of have another chance to crack them and don’t. We ran a perfect out of bounds lob to Ben and instead of making a basket we try and do something fancy. Then they run back and make a three on the other it end. It turns out to be a five-point swing. Instead of being up 13, it’s eight. There are so many things like that that we can correct. That was not a real good performance. We also need to step up to the free throw line and make free throws down the stretch.”

Kansas senior guard Travis Releford
On the difference playing in Kansas City makes:
“I guess just being back home. I’m always excited to be back here and see my friends and family member that I don’t get to see much. Most of them don’t get a chance to see me at the fieldhouse. I guess it’s just the excitement coming into the game.”

On coach Self’s message at halftime:
“He wasn’t too happy with us. He just told us there were things we need to work on to get better, finishing games, closing out halves. It’s stuff that we can correct and that we need to work on over the week.”

On what created easy scoring opportunities for him:
“Coach challenged mean at halftime, and all of the guards, just seeing how we hadn’t been attacking the paint which is stuff we’ve been working on the past week. I noticed this so I realized I should probably put pressure on the defense to help the team and it opened up a lot for me.”

On his satisfaction with the team’s ability to finish games:
“You’re always happy you can get a win but we’re not satisfied because we know as a team that we should be playing a lot better than we are right now. They could’ve come back and won that game and we had the lead and we could’ve closed the game. It could’ve gone either way.

Kansas redshirt freshman guard Ben McLemore:
On if his foul trouble affected his play:
“I don’t think it affected my play. Coach just told me to start moving with my feet and my hands and that’s what I did. I picked up another cheap one and I noticed once I got back in the game coach told me again to move my feet and that’s what I did. I knew when I picked up my fourth foul I had to play with my feet.”

Oregon State head coach Craig Robinson
Opening statement:
“It’s really an honor to play a game against a program like Kansas. I know it was big for my team, I know it was big for me and I know it was big for the Oregon State community. We want to thank Coach (Bill) Self and his staff for setting this game up. We were really able to test ourselves against one of the best in the country. If you want to beat a team like Kansas, you can’t miss as many foul shots as we did and you can’t miss as many easy shots around the basket as we did. Having said that, I love the effort that my team put forth going down 14 and then going down 10 or 11 and come back to be within three with a couple minutes to go.”

On capitalizing on Ben McLemore’s foul trouble:
“When you’re playing a tough game like this, and you get a call, you try to capitalize on it. If it seemed like every time we went on a run, and it was when (McLemore) was out, then that might be the case. (Kansas) certainly had enough guys to weather a Ben McLemore on the bench. I just thought out our guys didn’t give up and they knew how important this was to us, so they just kept grinding. We just keep grinding and try to get some stops. Hopefully we capitalize on those stops.”

On his offensive game plan against Jeff Withey:
“The difference between our offense versus normal offenses is that when we have a skilled center, we like to bring them outside and create certain kinds of matchups. It’s not like we were trying to change anything because of Withey. What we wanted to change is not driving in there and having him block shots. He only had three (blocks), so I feel kind of good considering he had like 20 the last game. We didn’t want to take it in there and let him tee off on us, but our usual offense is to bring our center high and let him make a play for us.”

Oregon State junior guard Ahmad Starks
On playing against Kansas’ defense:
“We wanted to put pressure on their guards, because those are good guys. We wanted to kind of tire them out and get them in foul trouble, but like Coach (Robinson) said, we were running our normal offense. We saw that we could bring Withey a little higher and away from the basket, so we tried to exploit that a little more.”

On if he thought he would have a big game against Kansas:
“Not necessarily. Those guys are big. I laughed when I was looking at their guards; not in awe, but they’re like 6-4 or 6-5 and big, athletic guards. They’re good, so you look forward to the challenge and you just go attack them.”