Nov. 18, 2003

Missouri Head Coach Quin Snyder

"That was a great game for us to play. Joey Meyer's is a terrific coach. They have not been together very long, but you can still see the quality of players that were out there on the floor. I though that was a great challenge for our guys especially early in the game when we were really having a hard time making a shot. I though that forced us to dig in even more defensively. We are trying to play faster and we made mistakes handling the ball. We need to do a better job of handling the ball. I felt like Jimmy McKinney controlled the game you could see it in his eyes, he is a heck of a player."

On Linas Kleiza...

"This is the first time in Linas's life that he is jus not playing the whole game. AJ's minutes will probably so I think it is learning not to pace ourselves, and knowing that the guy coming in after you will do is job. Our big guys wore them down inside; you could see that on the glass in the second half. Those four guys just battled. We are still learning about each other as a group."

On Jimmy McKinney...

"He is fearless the way that he is out there attacking the basket. He needs to keep doing that it was a freak play."

On Spencer Laurie...

"Your first game against a pro team there are things that you have to play through and I thought that Spencer did good job of that. The biggest thing was for him to guard the ball. That is something we have watched in practice. We did not want to make a decision until he had time to practice. We believe he can help us win this year.

On Kareem Reid...

"We felt that this would be a great test for us. Just look at the little things like how we played the screen and roll we had been aggressive guarding the screen and roll which shows a real collective emphasis on the defense, and you do not get those unless you play good players. I thought their physical strength and athleticism bothered us the first half and we were not attacking. I thought we got knocked back and made some mistakes because we were weak with the ball. That is something we have to work on, to attack and be smart about picking your spots and attacking with intelligence."

On running...

"When you are playing at that speed things are sped up more and you have t make quicker decisions. We will need to get better. We have a tough game coming up against Oakland. The shooting adversity was good because we had to dig in harder on the defensive end.

On Jimmy McKinney as a point guard...

"Jimmy is a point guard and a playmaker. He has always been a point guard it was just the Floyd Irons had some quick guys (at Vashon).