Post-Game Quotes: Texas
12/22/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 22, 2010
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Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo
Opening Statement. . .
"When you don't make shots, a lot of things look worse than they are. I really liked Texas' team and the way they played. That was the most physical game we were a part of since the Purdue days back with Gene Keady and Jud Heathcote. It was a very physical game. I just loved the way they played, but I thought we had some open shots in the first half. I didn't think we did as good of a job going inside, but we had some open shots when we decided to get it inside, then we came back a little bit there. Then we started the second half with two dead nuts layups and it took the wind out of our sails; like we're going to hits shots, we're going to hit shots. I looked at the stats and at one time we were 10 or 12 rebounds up on them and we ended up out rebounding them by seven, which was pretty good for us under the situation. We shot 80 percent from the line. They shot 41 percent, which isn't outrageous considering all the dunks on us and they shot 30 percent from the three. It came down to us missing shots, layups and probably running out of gas from not practicing. I think you see what happened with Korie (Lucious) and Keith (Appling) and I had to play Kalin (Lucas) more minutes, and he wore down. I think they did a good job of pressuring him. Every time we cut it down; we had our chances, but just did make shots. We got beat by a better team tonight, and points off turnovers really hurt us. And yet, I thought it was a war, and I think we competed. We just didn't finish."
On Green's and Summers' shooting...
"Draymond (Green), you know he's been making all those shots early, but he missed some today. I thought a couple of those inside I thought he got fouled, I really did; I wasn't real happy with that. Durrell works on his game as much as anybody, and he had some decent looks, but they just didn't fall tonight. And with Keith and Korie, it's self explanatory. They haven't practiced, so I guess you could say why would you play them because I thought it would give us our best chance to win. Nobody shot well, so I think you could pick it apart anyway you wanted to."
On how to fix the early season losses...
"Well, we need to get healthy. Tonight, I think you saw . . . you usually play like you practice and when you don't practice, and it's not their fault. You know Korie sucked it up; he got treatment and Asprin and everything he could do to get the pain down, and he played and I have no problem with that. But he didn't play very good. Keith was in the same boat. I think you could see on some of those drives that Kalin doesn't have that burst yet. I can't manufacture it, he can't, and you can't speed the process up any. It's just not there yet. That had nothing to do with why we shot so poorly early. We got sloppy the second half because of I think fatigue."
Texas head coach Rick Barnes
On stretch when Jordan (Hamilton) took over...
He's continuing to get better and better. He's really getting much better learning how to move without the ball. He's very good at reading defenses and Michigan State they don't give you anything, they fight you on the cuts. I told our team coming in if we can score against these guys it will go a long way to help us become a better offensive team. Jordan did some really good things moving without the ball and defensively we have to continue to get better. It was a great team win for us. Everyone, Tristan Thompson, did some great things inside. I thought the start of the second half we really got the transition game going, Dogus Balbay had a lot to do with that. Again, Matt Hill, the little subtle things he does for us don't show up on the stat sheet but it was a really good win for us.
On first non-conference team since Duke in 2003 to win at Breslin...
We didn't even mention that to our guys to be honest. We know it's going to get down to executing. I know our team has tremendous respect for Michigan State. We played them now four years in a row and every game has been a hard fought game. That's why I love playing against Tom's teams because you got to earn it and we were good tonight. We didn't talk about that, I did tell the team it was December and hopefully it will help us later on as we continue to get better but we're going to take some time off here and get back and get back to work, but we got a lot of work we have to do ourselves.
On team's progress...
Could we have done it a month ago? I don't know, we had one bad game at Southern Cal and that was my fault. We weren't good from the beginning and I look back at it and if we had to do it all over again we would change some things. With that said Southern Cal is a very good basketball team which they've proven, I'm not sure we could have beat them if we had done anything different but that night we didn't even put up a fight. We talked about playing one game we need to get better, as you mentioned we had a pretty good win the other night at North Carolina but we have to build on it. We need to get better on some things and we did.
On the little things (Matt) Hill does...
The biggest thing that he does, he keeps the ball moving for us. It's one big thing we talked about this year, moving the ball, not letting it die, and Matt's great at continuing to give ball screens and keeping things moving. He's our best post defender and he did a great job at helping, he kept telling his teammates to help him. That's one of the reasons they rebound so well, they screen so well, they make you help and it gives them inside position. Matt, no one deserves it more I can tell you from a team standpoint. Our guys love it when he's out there playing because they see him do it and they know he waited five years to have an opportunity to play, and he has taken advantage of it.