Sweet Sixteen Game Day - Oklahoma - University of Oklahoma

March 21, 2002

Head Coach Kelvin Sampson Quotes
Opening Statement:
"I was really disappointed with our competitiveness in the first half. I don't know if Arizona did anything that we didn't think they were going to do. I just didn't think we competed. Even in the Illinois-Chicago game or the Kansas State game in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament, I always thought we competed, so I got into them a little bit at halftime and told them it's not about winning or losing, it's about your identity. Good or bad, we're all known for something. The thing that we've been known for all year long, I didn't see during the first half. Did we play hard? Yeah, we played hard, but we didn't compete. In the second half, I think putting Selvy on Walton helped. Selvy is a unique kid in that he doesn't have a position. I love non-position players for us because they can bounce. Walton's a little like that, he can play just about anywhere. But Selvy, defensively, can play just about anybody. I thought he did a good job on Walton - I thought we pushed up on their shooters, but the main thing is we rebounded. When we're playing well, we're dominating the boards on both ends. We're not allowing second shots, and we're getting second and third shots. Our goal in the second half was use the dribble to get to the rim and once we got to the rim, we'll rebound like crazy. We had 16 offensive rebounds for the game and I would say most of those were in the second half. Selvy did a tremendous job, Hollis [Price] carried us early - he was tremendous, but I've come to expect that from Hollis. Ebi [Ere] and Aaron [McGhee] really played well. Aaron only had one rebound in the first half and seven in the second - that's the Aaron McGhee that I know. We only had five turnovers and we shot almost 90% at the line - and that's been a good recipe for us. Hopefully, we can continue doing that."

On getting to the Final Four:
"I've always thought that the teams that do well are the teams that do good enough, not the ones that handle the pressure. We're good enough to beat people. In the past, we were good enough to get there, now we're good enough to win. Pressure has nothing to do with it. I'm not coaching any different this week than I did last week or two years ago or three years ago. Coach Olson didn't either. He won a National Championship, I thought he coached pretty good today, they just got beat by a better team."

On getting someone to help Price:
"When you challenge kids, you can't challenge them to make more shots. You challenge them to be more aggressive, to be more attacking. It's like you're changing people's attitude. I don't know if we changed anybody's attitude at halftime, but we changed their behavior. It's a lot easier to change someone's behavior than their attitude. There's a difference in those two things. If your identity is making baskets and you aren't making baskets - what can you do to help us win a game? Our kids changed our behavior - we started working harder, playing harder, competing. Look how many loose balls we got to. It seemed like every time the ball hit the ground, we got every loose ball - that's behavior not necessarily attitude. Once you change your behavior and become more aggressive, now you have more attitude too. I think that gives kids confidence."

On OU's big guys taking it to the basket in the second half:
"Once Rick Anderson got his third foul, we decided to have Selvy attack him off the dribble. We started running some clear-offs for Daryan, but that was only once. Aaron's allowed to dribble it one time and pick it up, so he wasn't driving very far. It's either shoot it or score it, but he's not driving it."

Hollis Price -
On knowing before a game if he'll be on or not:
"Sometimes I do...I have a superstition. If I'm not hitting well [in warm-ups], I'll probably wash my hands when I go back to the locker room. Like today, I wasn't hitting it in warm-ups, so I went back and washed my hands, so I came out with a new set of hands."

On keeping Arizona out of the game:
That's something that we stressed, for example, in the first half they only shot 56 percent, and that's not our style - we really don't give up easy shots. I think we had the mindset at halftime that we weren't going to give up any easy shots or any second-chance shots. So that's what our mindset was coming into the second half."

On the physicality of the game:
"I'm sure no team's not going to back down if we're being physical. I think that they just stepped their game up because they're not really a physical team. They had to adjust to us and that's what we wanted to do - make them adjust to us, not us adjusting to them."

On his ankle twist:
"It didn't affect me at all. Sometimes I come down wrong and I tweak it a little, but that's all it was - just a little tweak. I was sitting on the bench for a minute or two, but that just got me going again. Once I got back in, everything took care of itself."

On being an underrated player:
"Our whole program is underrated. That's something we can't control we just have to go out there and play and let everything just take care of itself."

Aaron McGhee -
On beating the double team:
"In the first half, they were running two or three guys on me as soon as I caught the ball, so I was just trying to keep my teammates involved and trying to find the open guy for the open shot. At halftime coach really got into me, so I just wanted to stay aggressive and play my game."

On not having Hollis Price in the second half:
"Hollis was getting open and getting some good looks in the first half and he was knocking down his shots and getting some tough shots for us. In the second half, me and Ebi got going and carried the load."

On switching from an inside shot to an outside shot:
"When I was inside I just wasn't hitting anything. It was like there was a lid on the basket. So I stepped out a little bit, and started seeing what my jump shot was like and I hit a few shots."

University of Oklahoma Athletics

Sweet Sixteen Game Day - Oklahoma

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