University of Oklahoma Athletics
Oklahoma Postgame Quotes
March 01, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Oklahoma Head Coach Jeff Capel
Opening comment:
"First of all, I'm really proud of how our guys responded. It was great to be able to do this in front of the 1988 team. We had a great dinner with them last night. Coach Billy Tubbs said some things to them explaining and talking about that team and how committed they were. I thought that rubbed off on our team today. I thought we were committed. I thought we were tough. I thought we played with a lot of energy and passion. Obviously our defense was very good. I want to thank our great fans. They were very phenomenal and it really gave us a jolt, and in turn I thought we gave our fans a jolt. We gave them something to be proud about. Good win for our team. We've got to move on. We're playing on Wednesday against what's arguably the hottest team in the league right now. We feel good about this now."
On the defensive effort:
"It was great. To hold a team to 10 points in the first half, I hope people talk about it as much as they talked about us scoring 12 (at Nebraska). We heard a lot about that. I thought our defense was very good. I felt we forced them to run their offense a little bit farther out and took away some things. Other times we got lucky. They missed some shots too. I thought we had a good performance and good game plan. I thought our guys executed and for the most part I felt we did a good job of sustaining that throughout the game. We knew they were going to score some points, but to hold that team, that's averaging 74, to 37, which is right at half of what they average, is tremendous on our part."
On the play and minutes of freshman Cade Davis:
"He was great. I thought Cade did some really good things down at Nebraska, obviously he made some shots. He's gotten better and better all year. We wanted to mix it up a little bit. It gave us some energy, I thought he did a pretty good job defensively. Cade does a good job of feeding the post. He understands who he is and now he's learned the difference between good shots and bad shots. I think most of the shots he made today were good shots. At times he's still too fast, but I'll take that. I'll take a guy being too fast than trying to speed a guy up any day. You don't have to do that with him. He knows one speed and plays hard. He did a good job for us today."
Senior Center Longar Longar
On how the team responded today:
"We had a couple tough practices. As a team, we knew that we needed to get stronger with the ball and stop coming out flat early in the first half and going into the second half. I thought we picked it up at practice and that started with the last two practices we had. Guys came in ready to practice and it showed in the game today."
Junior Guard Austin Johnson
On the play of Longar Longar:
"It was great . Longar has been coming off the broken leg and has been slow lately and he knows he's been playing slow. Seeing him step up out there and get over it was great for all of us to see and I know he was proud of it as well."
On the win:
"We knew coming into this game that it was going to be a big game for us. Before the game, Coach talked to us in the locker room to forget about everything up to this point, don't worry about the wins or the losses, don't worry about anything up to this point. Just worry about this game right here. We knew that the `88 team was here and it was a big day for us playing against A&M, which is a good team. Coming in, we knew we wanted to play hard and go out there and show some passion, and we did it."
Freshman Forward Blake Griffin
On the win:
"This was a huge win, especially by that margin of victory. Beating a team like that always looks good, and improves our record and gives us momentum heading into these last few games."
On the play where he injured his knee:
"It was really similar to how I hurt it at Kansas. I jumped up for a rebound and I came down and kind of got mixed up with someone and somebody hit my knee on the outside and forced me inside. I felt it pop or twist or something and I knew it wasn't as bad as last time because I could kind of get up and run. It was pretty scary at first."
On building on this victory:
"We need to work on getting our offense going more quickly. Putting the whole game together is something Coach Capel keeps talking about and it is going to make us tougher. We need to put two halves together. I think we did a better job of it today. At the beginning we didn't score as well and, thankfully, they weren't either. We're just going to continue to work on playing a complete game."
Texas A&M Head Coach Mark Turgeon
Opening comment:
"I am at a loss. I can not believe the way we played. We committed one mistake after another and didn't play with much intelligence. Some guys had deer in the headlights look. It is too late in the season for that. This team has worn me down trying to figure them out.
"We were right there at 10-9 at the 12-minute mark. We had some pretty good looks, not great looks, and let our offense affect our defense. They (Oklahoma) got some confidence because we couldn't score. We had a chance down 18 points at half to come back. We weren't any better in the second half."
On beating Texas Tech by 44 points last Wednesday night and then performing like this today:
"We didn't do anything today. Some of our decision making--I can't explain it. It is too late in the year for that and I have been coaching them for a year. It blew me away. Give Oklahoma credit. They got after us and guarded the ball pretty well. We had a big-time practice yesterday and I felt really good coming in. Nothing carried over."
