Mizzou-UMKC Postgame Quotes
12/30/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 30, 2009
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Head Coach Mike Anderson Quotes
On struggling to hit shots early on...
"I thought our guys came out and they just couldn't knock any shots down. Before you knew it, we started pressing a little bit and we missed some layups. Credit Matt [Brown], his kids came out, and this game meant a lot to them. I thought our bench came in and they kind of got us settled down and got us into a rhythm."
On shooting the ball well in the second half...
"It was like a tale of two halves. We didn't shoot it well in the first half, but in the second half, we came out and the starters got things established."
On Justin Safford...
"We were active defensively, especially the second group. I thought we came out a little sluggish, real tentative, but we also missed a lot of shots. We inserted Justin Safford in the lineup to kind of get him going a little bit, and I thought once he settled down, he did some good things for us."
On Zaire Taylor...
"It was good to see Zaire really come out and play with that fire and that energy that we have to get from him. We've got to have other guys that give us that maximum effort anytime out there on the floor. It does not matter who we play. That's where you talk about creating those habits. It comes from practice, and from practice to the games."
On Coach Anderson's decision to go to his bench early in the game...
"Well, he just wasn't very happy with the way that we started the game; I think we were down 6-0 at the first media timeout. We weren't playing with a whole lot of intensity so he put Zaire and myself in the game to bring that intensity."
Missouri Forward Laurence Bowers
On what the sloppy start to the first half says about the team's effort...
"I don't think that it says too much. We had a really sloppy first half because we didn't have a lot of intensity and our shots weren't falling. I thought that the bench did a good job of picking us up and playing with intensity and after that, our shots started falling."
On his role coming off of the bench rather than starting...
"I just do whatever Coach wants me to do. I don't really make it a habit of questioning Coach; look at his resume - it speaks for itself - so I think he knows what he is doing. Coach always said that it is not how you start the game, but how you finish and if I can help do that, then I have done my job."
On their intensity taking the ball to the basket...
"As a player, when you are on the bench you can see things a lot better. As we were sitting on the bench in the early part of the half, even we were saying `that's not a good shot.' So when we got in, we just started to take the ball to the hole and once we did that, we started making more shots and that opened things up on the perimeter.
On the team struggling from the 3-point line...
"As a shooter you are taught from the time you are 12-years-old to keep shooting if things aren't going your way, so I think that is what were trying to do. It helps when you start to make layups and make some easy shots, then the basket becomes that much bigger and everyone's jump shots start to fall."
