Postgame Quotes

Feb. 6, 2012

Head Coach Lon Kruger
Opening comment:
“It was a good battle tonight. Obviously, Missouri is a terrific ball club. I really like what Frank (Haith) has done with that team. They play with great confidence and great awareness. They shoot it very, very well and they play well together. So they're a really good club. I'm proud of our guys' fight. We are just going to continue to work and get better. It is frustrating, I know, to the players, coaches and fans, to everyone to not get the result that we want. We just have to keep getting better. We keep telling our guys afterwards, 'Good battle and good work, but we've got to keep doing things from a habit standpoint to have more good possessions in a ball game, enough to get over the hump against good basketball teams.' In this league you are always playing good teams. I know we have some work to do. The guys will keep working at it. That is something they have done every day. I know they will keep doing that so I'm happy about that.”

On OU's offensive possession with 3.9 seconds to go:
“We were trying to get it in bounds and out of Roe's (Romero Osby) hands quickly and back to Pledge (Steven Pledger). But, they fouled on the catch, which is a generally a good strategy.”

On OU's struggles from the free throw line:
“It is hard to explain because we have shot free throws very well. Certainly Pledge is one of the top shooters in the country. When you play the game long enough, it will happen, unfortunately. It happened kind of with everyone it seemed. As a team we have shot it well all year. It's a hard thing to explain missing those early ones. It got a little contagious, perhaps. Again, it was just bad timing for that.”

On Romero Osby's health:
“I'm not making any excuses for Roe, but he has been battling the flu bug. He didn't practice yesterday. So, he got a lot of fluids into him today. Given the way he was feeling, I was proud of the fact he went out there and battled and did the things that he did do.”

On players stepping up offensively:
“It was great to see Carl (Blair knock) down some shots tonight. We need that from Carl. I thought Sam's (Grooms) effort tonight was terrific. We talked about the last couple days in preparation that the elbow jumper is going to be there. So he needed to step up and be aggressive. He did it with confidence and he did it aggressively. It took a little courage to do that. I liked his attack on the offensive end. So we need that, too. Obviously Pledge, Roe and Drew (Fitzgerald) are giving us some pretty consistent numbers. We just need to get some other guys feeling good about stepping up there. We still think they will.”

Junior Guard Sam Grooms
On the team still needing to improve in order to get the win:
“It's not hard at all to understand the fact that in basketball you have tomorrow, but by the same token, you want to win at this point in time, right now. We just have certain plays and certain mishaps on the court that don't allow us to do that right now. Like Coach said, when we're ready to do it, we'll do it. It's up to us at the end of the day.”

On taking confidence away from tonight's game after losing by 38 at Missouri in January:
“Definitely, I think that's obvious. I think you saw that tonight, just playing as a team. We had more confidence from the beginning of the game. That's just coming from us playing the last couple of games and just playing the total season. We first went up there and played them kind of shell shocked. We didn't play like a team, we had a lot of broken down plays. Tonight you saw a team that was more together, that wanted to win, that wasn't going to be scared of them and knew that we could play with them. Confidence wise, I think we're right where we need to be. We just go to play, show it on the court.”

Junior Guard Steven Pledger
On the final shot of the game:
“It was perfect. The play was designed to miss the free throw and get the tip-out and we actually got the tip-out. It was on line; it felt good when it left my hand. It didn't go in.”

On his and the team's free throw shooting:
“The free throws were killer. I couldn't even understand why I was missing, let alone the rest of the team. It's something we've got to get better at.”

On defending Missouri's guards:
“It was definitely challenging because Kimmy (Kim English) is a guard, he's not a 4. (Romero Osby) is a good matchup, he can move his feet and things like that. But Kimmy is a little bit faster. We tried to contain, we held a little bit too much and gave them shots.”

Missouri Head Coach Frank Haith
Opening comment:
“This was a good road win for us. It wasn't our best basketball, but on the road in the Big 12 it's not always going to be pretty and not easy. Our guys found a way to rip one out on the road, executed when we needed to, and got stops when we needed to. It was a great road win for us."

On strategy in final seconds of the game:
“We wanted to foul them and then they missed the first free throw. Heck of a play by their kid to tip it out to (Steven) Pledger, but we did foul.”

On the quick turnaround following the Kansas game:
“Well, there's no question you have to fight against all of that. You know, the emotional win and then you have a game at your place where you just play incredible and they didn't play their best game. So, you get a false sense and you worry about what it's going to be like when we get here. We talked about that with our team and how Oklahoma has done something we didn't do. They went into Manhattan and won and we got our tails handed to us in Manhattan, Kan. That was an eye-opener and this team is getting better. Lon (Kruger) has done a great job with these guys. So, I knew they were going to execute their offense and they were going to play hard defensively. You heard these guys tell you because we stress it -- we didn't play with the energy that we do on that end, on the defensive end. But I will say this: we talked about not losing and never letting them take the lead. That's a sign of a good team. I think once they made runs, we executed when we needed to make a shot.”

Missouri Senior Guard Marcus Denmon
On his basket with three minutes left after OU had cut the lead to two:
“Yeah, I just felt like going down the stretch, I had seen the shot clock going down and we hadn't scored in a couple of possessions, and I knew that we needed to get a basket. I was fortunate enough to make the shot.”

On his shooting in the beginning of the second half:
“My teammates just found me in position where I was able to get good looks. Coach always has confidence in me to take good open shots.”

On his shooting improvement since the Texas game:
“I've just been continuing to work, me and my teammates, and I've been shooting the same shots that I've been shooting. I was just fortunate enough to make some of those the last couple of games.”

Missouri Senior Forward Ricardo Ratliffe
On responding to OU's runs during the game:
“OU is a really good team and they're even better at home. College basketball is all about making runs. So when they got on that run, Coach called that timeout and we discussed how to get some shots. That's what we tried to do.”

University of Oklahoma Athletics

Related News

Related Videos

Sponsors