TULSA POSTGAME QUOTES VS. LOUISIANA-LAFAYETTE
11/18/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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TULSA HEAD COACH Frank Haith
Opening statement
"Obviously it's good to get that one on the left side of the column this time of year. I thought our guys really competed hard, played really really hard. At this time of year, we're still learning about player movement, ball movement, sharing the ball moving without the ball. We weren't really good at that the other day and I thought tonight we obviously did much better even though we didn't shoot the ball great. You look at Shaq Harrison and James Woodard, our two captains, our two leaders, they just didn't have great nights. But the great thing about the win tonight is you had guys like Marquel Curtis and Rashad Ray step up and help us win."
On the rest of the team stepping up when the "stars" shots weren't falling
"I think that's good, that's healthy. We had D'Andre Wright, who is actually one of our main guys, but he played well. And Marquel and Rashad Ray. Between James, 1-5, and Shaq, 2-12, combined 3-17, I don't know that we will have many nights when both those guys shoot that poorly. So that was good to see. We got to the free throw line and it was the second game in a row we shot well from the free throw line. I thought we rebounded well against a team that was bigger. I thought we did really well against their length and our goal is to get 30-35 points in the paint night in and night out, we want paint points that's who we are that's the type of team we are. Throwing it in there and driving it in there - we want to get paint points."
On ULL's athleticism
"They really are [very athletic]. They were an NCAA team last year and got a lot of guys back. They lost one kid, Perry, who was a lottery pick. But between Rimmer and Long, those two kids are really good players and were really important to them getting into the NCAA tournament last year."
On the fight in the team tonight compared to Saturday at ORU
"Yeah, there's no question [we had more fight tonight]. I said this after last game, our competitive spirit was not where it needed to be for that game, in that environment. Although, if we had made a couple more shots we probably could have still won that game, because we shot so poorly. There is no question, I thought our intensity level and how we competed tonight was great."
On James Woodard contributing outside of scoring
"No question [he helped out in other ways tonight]. Character. The young man has that experience. When you look at a guy that's not having his night as the leading scorer, but he didn't hang his head and he found a way to do other things to help us win, it tells you a little bit about that young man. Doing the little things. At the beginning of the second half there, we lost a little bit of our discipline on the defensive end. We're a gap defensive team and we took ourselves out of some plays and gave them some open lanes to the basket. We didn't trap, we were trapping long when we got in the low post. We had some rotational stuff we weren't great at. James and those guys did a good job of understanding how we wanting to play defensively."
On what he liked about the ball movement tonight
"Just sharing the ball. Good shot or great shot. We're still not great at it, but we're getting better. There were more of those today than the other night."
On his comfort level with taking about 10 threes a night
"That's about where we're at. That's about where we want to be. Like I said, we're a paint point team. There are going to be some nights when we make some 3s, but we can't hang our hat on that."
On out-rebounding ULL 37-31
"Yeah, two nights in a row. Going into the season, I remembered that the Tulsa game last year they cracked us on the glass, I think they were plus-8 on the boards and they had 18 offensive rebounds. So that's been an emphasis of ours. We try to make sure we take care of that part of the game. And they were good on that end of the ball too, they led their league in rebounding last year with the big kid and third in offensive rebounding. I thought we did a great job on the glass."
On the short turn-around for Wednesday
"No, not much time. In our scheduling, we were goofy in this way to start the year. Three games in five days and starting on the road, but, hey, it will help us in the long run."
On what the first win at a new school feels like
"It feels great. It feels great. There's always that getting the monkey off your back. It's always a tough one getting that first one, so we're glad we got it."
On if they'll take tomorrow off
"No, no. We've got work, but we won't grind them, but we've got to work, we've got to prepare."
On preparing for ACU on Wednesday
"We'll do some stuff in terms of massages and whatnot, getting them prepared physically, but we've got to prepare. We'll get our walk-through and work on our execution. And we'll watch some things from this game too. We always do that, we call it the good, the bad and the ugly. So we'll have a little session of that and then we'll get right into it."
JUNIOR GUARD Marquel Curtis
On his play tonight
"After the last game I really felt like I got in a groove late, but then I fouled out. In practice I have been feeling really good in shoot around so I thought my time was coming."
Challenges on playing with the big Lafayette guys inside
"We had different strategies to guard them and we really worked. Until late in the second half we really did not trap like we were supposed to but for the entire game, other than that, we did a really good job."
On this game and win overall
"It was a gutty win, and we are going to be in a lot of those games in conference play. That's going to help us in the long run."
