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Coach Scott Nagy's quotes at Oakland
2/19/2010 4:14:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Opening
Statement
"I thought our effort was good. We played well enough offensively to win
the game. We have been trying to focus on being a pretty good team to being a
championship team and the details are the difference in that. There are
probably 10 plays I can show our guys in terms of details that would have
changed the game for us. The effort is there and as a coach that is the first
thing you need to get and its there. They're too big, too fast and too athletic
for us not to take care of the details."
On
second half adjustments by Oakland on Garrett Callahan
"With Garrett, we have had to hold him out of practice for the most part
because he has some back problems-- a cracked vertebra. We have done just about
everything that we can do for it. So in the first half he did well, not to say
that didn't do a good job defensively, but when you sit 15 minutes then try to
come back out and play you don't have any lift. I'm not trying to make excuses
for him, he is a good player. When they want to shut someone down they put Jonathan Jones on them and in the second half they put Jones on him. And for Garrett
that is one of his problems right now.
On
the changing point in the second half
"It was the start of the half. We probably have our best offensive player
miss a wide-open layup and no one blocks out. So right there it goes from a two
point game to a six or eight point game like that. Then for the rest of the
time we are battling back so the turning point for me was right at the start of
the second half. We battled back, they stretched it out, then we battled back,
but if we started off the second half better and make layups and you talk about
details, I mean on the road against a team like this, you can't do that."
On
how close they are overall to beating better teams
"Talent wise, they got better players, bigger more athletic, but we are
getting better trust me, we are getting there. We will be there. I think our
players mentally have gotten over the hump, it took a few years but we have
gone from a not-so-good team to a pretty good team. There is nobody whipping us
anymore. We got pretty good fight and our kids know how to win games finally
and those kinds of things. That's a big part of it and they believe going into
a game that they can win. They wouldn't have played the way they did tonight if
they didn't believe they could win. They had to believe those things and that
was a big hurdle for us to get over. I think we are over that. I think we know
that we can beat anybody. I think the difference for us is that, Oakland can
play poorly and still win and we can't do that. There's just no way. We are not
good enough talent wise to do that and our guys know that. It won't be long, we
will be there. We have more talent than we had last year, we are stronger at
the point guard position and that helps a lot and we returned all those guys
with experience which helps. It took us a year to get over that hump of
wondering if we can play and we have won every single game thinking we can win
and that's a big part."
On
changing the starting lineup
"That was, when we talk about details, that was a couple of guys not taking
care of the details off the floor. So I had to make a switch. That's the kind
of stuff we are talking about is the details on the floor and details off the
floor, all that stuff is important. You can't separate who you are on the floor
from who you are off the floor and so we are just trying to clean some of that
stuff up. I mean, it was nothing huge, if it was huge those people wouldn't
have played. It's just small things, but the small things are the big
things."
Forward Kai Williams
On
how these games set up for the tournament
"First off they set us up for seeding to get the best possible seed for
the conference tournament. I mean every game we play in conference sets us up
and prepares us for the conference tournament. So these last games are big and
to prepare us to play in a good rhythm and flow for the conference
tournament"
On
second half-adjustments by Oakland
"They switched it up, stuck to me, played good defense. I didn't get open
as often, that's about it playing Oakland hard in both games this season It's
just the little things. We played them well so we know we can beat them. It's
just the little things like coach said. And just watching film the next few
days and cleaning those things up. We will play with confidence down the
stretch don't worry."
Players Mentioned
G
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