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South Dakota State University Athletics
0307 MBB quotes vs. Oakland
3/7/2011 11:17:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Monday, March 7, 2011 -- men's semifinals
Oakland vs. SDSU
SDSU Coach Scott Nagy opening comments:
Basketball is a game of match-ups. We match up great with IPFW. We don't match up well at all with Oakland. Height-wise and physically, we don't match up well. Those wholes were exposed well. We just gave up so many shots early that we couldn't catch up.
(What did SDSU do differently this time against Oakland, besides pressing the ball?)
That's really it. Then we pulled that off. They're just too fast, too athletic.
They shot 66 percent in the second half. We shot 51 percent. Part of that is communication. We weren't a great communicating team all year. We're a quiet bunch. Defense is about communication. When the defense is in front of our bench they're a better defensive team. In the second half, when they're not in front of our bench, we don't play defense as well.
When I look at next year's team, we got some kids that can score. We got Nate coming back, Jordan coming back, Chad coming back. But what's got to happen is these good offensive players have to come back and decide they want to play defense.
We're not super athletic. Oakland is. Oklahoma is serious. Their program is serious. The other programs, if you want to win championships in this league, you better be serious about it.
This is the season that put South Dakota State back on the map. This team, maybe more than any team I've ever coached, gave me hope. They had fun. I know it was fun for the fans to watch them. It's not just about fun, but it does help the countenance of the team. It can't be all drudgery.
(On desire to reach the next level of competitiveness in this league) We're serious about it. Everything's tied to recruiting. Of course, our recruiting is a lot different than Oakland. Draw a 100-mile radius from Oakland.
We've got to get bigger and more athletic. We will get there. We're already getting there.
Oakland is tremendous and we don't match up with them at all. We scored 90 points tonight and we got beat by 20. That's hard for me to shallow because that's not who I want us to be.
(Valentine) He hasn't been playing well offensively. We had (Dale) Moss on (Richard) Hamilton and he (Valentine) got off to fast start. Once he got going... He's a good player. He's kind of their glue guy.
(down 25-9 at start) Definitely wasn't the start we're looking for. Frustrating. We never really gave ourselves a chance.
We still scored on them, but we just couldn't stop them. Pretty frustrating.
(On how frustrating is was to try to battle back) When you don't get stops, it's almost impossible to come back. We had a couple pushes to get it to 13, but then they'd hit a three.
(On Oakland) Everyone can score out there. There really is no weak spot.
Jordan Dykstra:
You want to make it closer than 20. We didn't match up size wise but that's not an excuse. We didn't rebound when we went to the zone defense.
(On the team's improvement) We went 14-16 last year, 19-12 this year. I feel like we have a good future ahead of us.
Players Mentioned
G
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