South Florida -Michigan State Postgame Quotes.
12/16/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 16, 2003
Post Game Quotes Michigan State vs. South Florida December 16, 2003
South Florida Head Coach Robert McCullum "There was a stretch (in the second half), I don't recall how much time was remaining, but we cut (the point difference) to nine points. As I recall, there were three defensive stops during that stretch where we could not score. That was a great opportunity and I thought that, at that point, we still had a fighting chance because we were down to nine points and we took the ball three straight times. We were unable to take advantage of those opportunities and (MSU) pushed (the point difference) back to 13 or 14. I was proud of my guys for not quitting and for hanging in there because the first half could not have been worse. I thought that it showed a lot of pride and a lot of guts to come out and fight the way that we did in the second half."
On whether Michigan State entered the second half with less intensity because of the Spartan lead "That is human nature. Human nature tells you to do that and it is difficult when you are up by that amount of a margin, to come out and play with the same amount of intensity. Maybe some of those final four teams have the stuff to do that and I am not trying to say that I am an expert on their team because I am not. Usually, experience would prevent those types of things from happening."
On South Florida's strategy in the first half "We tried some different things. We actually went with a different lineup that we thought would be bigger. From the very first possession and on, we really were not clicking, our timing was off and we were not executing well. Obviously, Michigan State had a lot to do with that because this was an opportunity for them to right their wrongs and to get back on the winning track and we were aware of all of those things. It was an enormous challenge, but I don't know why we got off to such a start. Our leading returning scorer from last year, Jimmy Baxter, did not score and that certainly did not help the situation."
MSU Head Coach Tom Izzo
"Delco (Rowley) has a sprain to worse, I don't have information right now but it's not anything any good."
"I was pleased by the way we started. I thought we really brought some energy the first seven or eight minutes then we kind of settled back a little bit and then did a heck of a job offensively before the half. I thought moving the ball and hitting open men and doing a lot of good things. Then we just didn't play very well in the second half, especially the first five minutes. I think they went on a 15-1 run, had four or five turnovers. Sometimes that happens and that is a little disappointing. In the end, in the last ten minutes I decided to play a lot of people because I think I have to get to a point sometime where I can get some of these guys some minutes so that's what I did and that probably didn't help our continuity but it did accomplish some of the things I wanted to accomplish. I'm happy for Kelvin Torbert because it was a rough day for him, his uncle died and he was at the funeral this afternoon, so it was great to see him bounce back. He had a pretty good day from the field and he also had six rebounds."
"We turned the ball over too much at the wrong positions and our interior defense was still not very good. So those are the areas we are going to have to question."