Mizzou Basketball Post Game Quotes
12/30/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 30, 2008
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Head Coach Mike Anderson Quotes
December 30, 2008
Missouri vs. Centenary
On the pace of the game:
“I'll tell you what, it was a different kind of game than the ones we've been playing, the fast-paced, up-tempo. Give credit to Centenary, they came in with a game plan and they were going to take care of the basketball. Defensively, we did a lot of good things. We set the tone early and started off with a half-court man and the pressure kind of picked up in the second half. In the second half, we really came out and went for them.”
On Matt Lawrence's three-point shooting and size advantage:
“We established the inside, and that was really the big difference, especially in the second half. I thought DeMarre came out with a lot more energy. Leo and him were attacking the basket. We had a big size advantage and at times we took advantage of it and at times we didn't. But it was good to see Matt [Lawrence] knock down some shots and that really opened up more in the second half.”
On being able to use the entire bench:
“We got a chance to get them out there and I thought in the first half they came in and did some good things. In the second half, we kind of lost our rhythm and started standing around a little and started predicating the game on offense. I always say that, if there's one thing you want to predicate the game on, it's on defense, and then good things will take place. When I inserted the starters in the second half, going down the stretch with seven minutes to go, the lead just seemed to grow.”
On remaining focused throughout the game:
“We were giving up a lot of uncontested lay-ups, to tell you the truth. They were coming out on the other end and we were just standing around and we lost our focus. That can happen sometimes when you have a lead of 26 points, but I want our guys to understand that no matter what the score is, I want them to play and play to win.”
Mizzou Basketball Player Quotes
Centenary vs. Missouri Player Quotes On coming back into game late “Not at all because our bench has been playing so good lately, I mean they're still freshmen and they're still young and they make mistakes just like we do so we had to come back in there and fix it in order for them to go back in there and play.” What he has been saying to the younger players as a leader “I know what it feels like to be in that position, so the only thing you can do is try and keep his confidence up and let them know that we still need them, even if he might not play that many minutes. Things happen during the season, like injuries and a lot of things happen so, I've just got to keep his confidence up and he knows that sooner or later he'll have his time.” On play a couple tune-up games before the road game at Georgia “Yeah, you're right it's kind of weird to be 13 games in the season and going on our first road trip so it's good to get a couple of more games here at home, especially to get that taste out of our mouth after our trip to St. Louis. I think it's important for our basketball team to get the winning mindset back and know what it takes to win and kind of use this as momentum as we go down to Georgia this weekend.” On J.T. Tiller & Zaire Taylor's role in the offense “They have a huge role in the offense, they're the guys that mainly handle the ball and they get us into what we're trying to do and what we do is to try and establish Leo (Lyons) and DeMarre (Carroll) early. They do a great job of that, whether it's getting in the lane and finding them for an easy two points or setting up a high-low. These two guys work together and they're so unselfish as well, they do a great job of getting our two best players the ball early, kind of establishing that and they do a good job of working it down later in the game. I think that's what we wanted to do to begin the second half and I think we did that the way we wanted to.” The Illinois game' effect on team “Overall, we come out we've got a different mindset now. You can see it as starters we try to go out there and jump on the team early. We may have had a slow start leading up to the Illinois game and that's something coach really emphasized- jumping up and getting ahead early. So I think that's a positive that we did and I think we came together as a team and we're more cohesive as a team now, so I think that's another positive.” On the Illinois game “It may've been a blessing in disguise. We really weren't up for that and after that it hurt so bad that we've still got the feeling in our blood, so every time we go out there now we just try as hard as we can to go out there and compete as hard as we can because we know we can't afford to just look at jerseys. We're not that type of a team yet, we just can't go out there and turn it on, turn it off, we've just got to come play basketball.”
