OU-Texas Tech Postgame Quotes

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Head Coach Lon Kruger
Opening comment:
“Well, from start to finish I thought the focus was really good. Defensively, early, we were able to get on top of some things and create a little bit of offense from defense. That got the offense jumpstarted. Good focus. We came out of the half with a good lead and played it like you would want to coming out of the half with the lead and widened it out. A lot of guys played well and most importantly I thought our focus and attention defensively was pretty good.”

On how much it helped defensively to have fresh legs:
“Hopefully it helped. We made it clear early in practice this week that we were going to play more people. We have to play more people. Those people have to step in and play their minutes better and it will be a win-win if we can do that. We did tonight. I thought they played well. Khadeem (Lattin) came in with good activity. I thought Frank (Booker) played well. They made some good plays for their teammates. I thought a lot of guys played well.”

On if he saw this coming:
“No, of course you don't ever expect that, to that degree. I liked the last couple of days of practice. [The players] focused on 'We have to be stronger, we have to be more physical, we have to be tougher, we have to communicate better.' You always want to improve across the board and we have to keep doing that. This league is unforgiving. At Kansas, at Baylor, two really good teams, and we had a chance to – late in the game, with the lead – we had a chance to get in the right column and we didn't do it. We just have to keep getting better. You can't worry about what has passed, you have to try and get better and this group had a couple of good days of practice.”

On how much a game like this gets them right again:
“It feels great, but it doesn't mean anything as it relates to Saturday other than Oklahoma State feels good about their win last night and we feel good about this win. Our guys understand that we have to go back and play better and work harder to keep making progress in preparation for Saturday.”

On if a coach savors this or a coach's mentality comes into play:
“You will still do a little bit of that but not so much. You reinforce things that you did well and things that…'OK, you did that, but now we need to do it, it needs to become more of a habit and we need to do it more consistently and do it for 40 minutes'. You're kind of reinforcing the good things out of a game like this and encouraging them to do it again and as often as we possibly can. For the most part, it's about reinforcing the positives."

On Khadeem Lattin's impact:
“Yeah, I really liked Khadeem's activity. He is a guy that has got to take advantage and use his activity because he is so quick and so bouncy. He may not always be where he needs to be, but that's okay if he is active and aggressive. That's kind of what we are encouraging of him. Go play, go be aggressive, fly around, and I think he is getting better and better.”

On if being aggressive was something they planned for or something they saw that they could take advantage of:
“It's something we need to keep getting better at. Being more aggressive, more physical, tougher to loose balls, tougher on rebounds; this is a league where we just have to be tougher. Every team is talking about that. You just have to get loose balls, not let rebounds slip away, you have to value each possession and do it for 40 minutes. We have a ways to go in those areas and yet the last few days we have gotten better.”

On what kind of challenge Oklahoma State will be:
“That will be a big challenge. They're a ballclub that has been ranked all year and deserved that. It's a good crowd over there and they play very well at home especially, like most people. Our guys respect that and know how tough it will be.”

On how critical it was to have no one play more than 28 minutes:
“That's good. Again, we would love to be able to keep that up. Obviously, it was a little distorted because no one played much the last seven or eight minutes. But still, it was much improved in terms of getting our bench in early, playing their minutes better and getting our starters to log fewer minutes. It's important.”

Junior Forward Ryan Spangler
On enjoying this game:
“It's nice to play well as a team on both ends of the court. We finally played 40 minutes of pretty good defense, and we got out and ran which is when we are at our best. Tomorrow we start getting ready for OSU on Saturday.”

On playing with intensity:
“Coach has been preaching to us that someone has to light the fire. I think all of us did that today. I got a few easy baskets so maybe it looked like I did that, but I think all of us playing defense hard really did it and we kept it up all game.”

Junior Guard Isaiah Cousins
On how he felt during the game:
“I felt pretty good. I'm just recovering from the last game, and my wrist feels better. It was great.”

On how his wrist felt during pregame warmups and if he was nervous about how it would hold up:
“I was just trying to get as much treatment as I could, but I wasn't really nervous. I was trying to see how it was going to feel today. Even if the wrist wasn't going to work I was just going to make plays for my teammates.”

On if he expected a performance like tonight:
“The way we have been playing in practice and with the coaches being hard on us I did feel that we would have a good defensive game. We have to respect the coaches because they preach it all practice. We have to be ready for every game from now on.”

Texas Tech Head Coach Tubby Smith
Opening comment:
“I really didn't see this coming. I thought that we were prepared. We missed some shots early on and the rest of it was down hill. We had no self confidence and Oklahoma is the type of team that if you do that, you get beat bad.”

On how hard it is for the team to overcome such a slow start:
“It's hard. You can see we didn't have a lot of offensive firepower. We didn't make shots and we struggle. We've got Norense (Odiase) back; he's a freshman and he struggles sometimes. Zach (Smith) was coming off the flu, so it showed. It shows that they have a lot more maturity and we just couldn't resist [OU's effort].”

On the screens in the half-court set not being as efficient as they were against Iowa State:
“Yeah, they were beating us to the screens. We weren't really waiting on it and guys weren't able to set up screens tonight.”

On what he tells his players:
“Well, I just told them like I told you all, we didn't see it coming. We had good practices, came off of a big win Saturday. You learn something about your team every time something happens and how they deal with prosperity, which wasn't very good.”

On if the turnovers were frustrating because they happened in live-ball situations:
“Yeah, when you have live-ball turnovers and they get dunks and layups and things – those were probably the most demoralizing turnovers we had.”