TULSA POSTGAME QUOTES VS. SOUTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA STATE
12/10/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Recap | Box Score | Notes
TULSA HEAD COACH Frank Haith
Opening statement
"Obviously we didn't play our best and those guys played very well. This loss is on me, I felt like our guy's energy just wasn't there from the get-go. When you play a team like this the way they beat you is from the three-point line and they made 10 threes and we didn't guard the three-point line Give them credit, but we didn't have our best effort tonight."
On the motivation factor on going into a game like this
"I wish I knew. I can't put a finger on the lack of effort today. All I can do is point fingers at me. I take full credit for that. We're going to fix it by Saturday."
On whether this could be a wake up call
"Well I hope so. Anybody can beat anybody. We talked about that pregame. You got to get yourself ready to play. You look across the country. Guys get beat by teams that aren't supposed to get beat by. It happens all the time. What a lot of times happens, the two things that happen: A. The team doesn't play with the effort they need to play with; B. The team usually makes a lot of threes. I think both of those things happened to us tonight."
On how SE Oklahoma State came out of the locker room at half
"I thought we would turn it around and get ourselves going. Give them credit. They made some big shots and free throws. They executed very well down the stretch."
On the possibility of using the full-court press a little earlier in the second half
"It's easy to go back and say that after the game. But we lost Rashad Ray - he fouled out. I don't know I can't answer that kind of question. It's easier to say after the game, `We could have done this. We could have done that.' We just didn't have the effort."
TULSA JUNIOR GUARD Marquel Curtis
On where the energy was at the end of the game
"I have no clue, but it is unacceptable. Like coach said we didn't come out with any energy. The whole game we were just lazy, I don't know why or what was going on, but they just executed and hit 10 threes and that's the reason why they won."
On if he felt like we still had a shot at coming back
"Yeah, we never stopped believing, we always knew we could come back. We kept playing and getting steals but we kept turning the ball over and giving them free-throws, so that's what happened at the end."
On what they were doing to get open for the threes
"We were just broken down on defense. Mentally we weren't there today for some reason."
On if he thought Shaquille Harrison's last shot was going in
"Yeah, I thought it was going to go in."
On the lack of energy against opponents that you feel like you should beat
"We treat every game the same. We know what to expect, we should win, and we expect to win every game. But today, like coach said, our energy wasn't there and we lacked focus on offense and defense."
SOUTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA STATE HEAD COACH KELLY GREEN
Opening statement
"We had to play outstanding, and we played pretty darn close. Fortunately, there were not two more seconds on the clock. And we were actually trying to foul at the end, but our guys were thinking we were yelling "don't foul, don't foul!" But our kids were resilient. We have gone through quite a bit of adversity this year and our guys just did an outstanding job. They stuck with our game plan, though we got a little frantic at the end, and were just able to hang on. Fortunately there was not much time left."
On getting open for 3-pointers
"We are a pretty good three-point shooting team. We have been running a lot of things here recently and trying to get the ball to our shooters on the floor. We have been messing around with a lot of different line-ups this year and we just changed our line-up in the last week or two to go a little bit bigger. We are fortunate that we have a big guy or two who can step out and shoot it. Any time that you have a big guy that can step out and shoot, it can cause problems for the other team."
What's the thought when you're up 19 points?
"Go clock, go. The clock quit going for awhile, and they were just coming at us, and we were taking quick shots at times instead of understanding that we need to work the clock and work the basketball. One of our guys said, "Coach, I thought it was going in." I said, "It doesn't make any difference if it goes in, we can get that shot when there are five seconds left on the shot clock." We had to make sure that we came down and we ran stuff, whenever we got on our heels, here they came. Their athleticism is impressive; they are so quick to the basket. I thought for a while in the second half when we started building our lead, our big guys got really big inside. They quit moving as they were driving at us, which I think caused them some problems. We have pretty good size in there and we did a nice job of walling them off and held them to one shot a few times in a row. "
