OU-Texas Postgame Quotes

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Head Coach Lon Kruger
Opening comment:
"Obviously, we are very pleased to beat a squad like Texas anytime. We feel great about that. I like the way our guys played, I thought their focus from start to finish was really good defensively. Texas' big guys are so good that we had a bunch of people trying to help our big guys inside and our big guys did a good job to start with. I thought our perimeter guys played with great awareness, too. We moved the ball pretty well offensively, [just] a couple turnovers in the first half is always a good number. We got pretty good looks, and start to finish I thought it was pretty good defensively. It's always good to win, especially on the road."

On their dominant defensive performance:
"Texas had some looks that didn't go down, and that always helps, but I thought our guys had a little to do with that. Ryan [Spangler] and Ta[Shawn Thomas] do such a good job as big guys inside with awareness and working hard early. Again, I thought our perimeter guys from the weak side did a good job trapping the post. I thought our awareness on the weak side was pretty good and we didn't really get hurt when we trapped the post, and that always helps."

On playing with a big lead for the majority of the game:
"We try to [play] regardless of the score. We are talking about that throughout every ballgame, it's [about] the next play. The next possession is all that counts, it is the only important one. That's the focus that I talked about earlier that was pretty good tonight. We never did go too many stretches where [Texas] had too many buckets back-to-back that would dent the lead, and that's always good."

Senior Forward TaShawn Thomas
On outscoring Texas in the paint:
"Before the game, all of the coaches were telling us that [Texas] is big, you have to be ready to play. So, me and Ryan [Spangler] talked a lot … before the game, we kept on talking that we have to get into their legs and stay low. That helped us out, it really did help us out today because I thought we did a good job of stopping them from getting the ball in the paint."

On the effort on both ends of the court tonight:
"I felt like on both ends at halftime we were just telling each other, “Don't let them comeback. We got to stay humble and keep our foot on the pedal.” That was one big thing coach told us when he came into the locker room, “Don't let up. Forget the first half and keep it going.” I felt like we did a good job with that."

Junior Guard Isaiah Cousins
On the whole team contributing to the win:
"The bigs did what they were supposed to do, and the guards were just helping and we just came together as a unit. We had one thought in mind as a team, help the bigs today. That was the main goal."

On if the older players remember Texas' comeback win against them two years ago:
"We were aware, but [back then] we didn't have that maturity on the team. That kind of affected the way we came back in the second half. Now this year was different because we have seen what happens if we don't come out ready to play. We are more aware [now]."

Texas Head Coach Rick Barnes
On whether the game was embarrassing:
"I said that but again I don't want to take anything away from Oklahoma because I think they play the way they play. We started the game and we missed some shots and then we let that spill over into how we played, and I felt like when you look at things like 18-for-60 and you only have 11 offensive rebounds and 10 turnovers early in the game. I did tell them this, pride gets into it, too, and at some point in time you have to decide that we aren't going to do this and we aren't going to take this. Again, there are nights when you don't make shots and we had some looks early that are shots that we've taken and made and then all at once everyone trying to do it themselves, and we really dug ourselves a hole. The thing that really bothers me, and why I use the word pride, is the more we dug that hole the less I thought we started fighting. It was at every position it wasn't just at one position."

On having nights when you can't shake poor shooting:
"Yes over my career yes. But I'm disappointed because I didn't think we showed any type of toughness at all. We didn't show any type of fight. Again, I felt like we splintered. We had too many guys trying to do it by themselves and thinking that they were going to make something happen but as a team we need each other to do a lot of different things. The most disappointing thing is that I don't think we've played well in three weeks, and Isaiah is back so there is going to be a little bit of flow there but that has nothing to do with it."

On sensing the game falling apart:
"No, and I think this is going to be good for us because it's interesting. After the Kentucky game our message to them was this, anybody can go play the No. 1 team in the country with passion and focus, energy and effort, and any team can do that one time. But if we're the team that we want to be, that has to be every night and we haven't had it since. We haven't played with that kind of energy or focus. Anybody can do it one time but great teams do it every night. That is probably what bothers me more than anything. Since the Kentucky game we've harped on that kind of effort and focus and we haven't gotten it."

On any concerns for the direction of the team:
"No, we're going to be all right. We have a long way to go but it goes back to this, we've proved that we can play harder, we can be focused and we can execute. We lost the Stanford game because they came in and for 40 minutes they played harder than we played. If you go back to the Rice game, we struggled with that game. Sooner or later we have to know who we are. We have to play harder and we have to compete but we haven't gotten back to that level, but that's what I want to see, a group of guys that are hungry and have pride and play hard and compete."

Texas Junior Guard Demarcus Holland
On what is missing with this team currently:
"We haven't been playing well these past couple of weeks. We really just have to figure out who we are. Get back to basics of how we started, just playing defense and out-rebounding teams. [We need to be] blue collar players and go out there and execute what the coaches have laid out for us."

On if the team has lost its identity:
"I wouldn't say we lost our identity, I would just say we have to get back to those [small] things. Don't forget about those small things that got us to how we started. We have to go back to the small details, boxing out people, running the floor and keeping our spacing and getting more stops on defense."

Texas Junior Guard Javan Felix
On his assessment of tonight's performance:
"I think tonight offensively in the first half we got open looks. [We had] a lot of open looks that we usually knock down and a lot of stuff we usually rep every day in practice. It just didn't fall for us [today], and we let it affect the rest of our play, and we can't do that. We're a better team than that. We've gone through games where we couldn't make shots and we adjusted and did other things. We let it affect us tonight, and we can't do that. That's the bottom line."

On if the team let up after falling behind by a large deficit:
"really. We just got frustrated and we let it affect our defense. We can't let that happen. We pride ourselves on being one of the best defensive teams in the country, and we didn't play like that tonight. We are going to correct it, we are going to stay together and we are going to get better over these next couple of days."

Texas Senior Forward Jonathan Holmes
On their performance tonight:
"That was embarrassing. They came in here, took us out of everything, played harder than us, showed more pride than us, were tougher than us and beat us in every area of the game."

On the players' messages to each other at halftime:
"We were just trying to stick together. We dug ourselves a hole, and we knew it was going to be tough to get back in the game. We were just trying to stick together."

On Oklahoma's performance tonight and its team overall:
"They are a really good team. They are really good on offense, they are balanced. They can shoot, they can pound it inside and they can play defense. They are a championship caliber team. They're a good team … They really punched us in the mouth. Their bigs played better than we did and took it to us."