Mizzou Head Coach Kim Anderson
Opening statement…
"First thing is, you have to give Central Missouri credit. Certainly we knew coming in here, that they were a much better team than their record indicated a year ago. That's probably the most disappointed winning locker room I've ever seen. I don't want to take anything away from Central Missouri, but I think we could learn a lot from this. We won the game, and we had to do some things to win the game. You know, I'm disappointed, to be candid with you. I thought we played nervous. We had a lot of shots we missed that were close-in shots. We obviously shot the ball a little bit better in the second half than we did the first half. But we turned it over 16 times and you can't really do that. But, we have a lot to work on, we were going to have a day off tomorrow, we're not now. So we're going to get back to work. The great thing about a game like this, and I know there are a lot of people who are disappointed, but the great thing about this is we can learn a lot, we still won the game. So, we'll come back tomorrow and get to work and we've got nine days until we play again. This will be a good teaching opportunity and next Sunday you'll see a different team."
On his feelings on how the game played out…
"I thought we started out slow, but we had a chance to break the game maybe a little bit open. We were up 18-10. But then we kind of ran into a rut. Our defense was pretty good the first half. I think the second half we probably got tired. I hope I prove myself right, I think this is the best thing that could happen to us. I think we have a group who are great guys, they really are. But I think we needed a little bit of a wakeup call. And again, I'm not taking anything away from Central Missouri because they definitely woke us up. Again, I hope we learn from this."
Freshman guard Frankie Hughes
On big dunk to end game…
"There wasn't much to it. I was just trying to finish the game off and make sure my team got the win. I mean, it was a pretty nice dunk, but at the end of the day we still won."
On any nerves playing tonight…
"As the game started going, I started feeling more comfortable, I started getting a feel for the game. So that really helped."
On Willie Jackson's impact…
"To me, Willie is kind of an energy guy. He can do it all. He can play defense, he'll block shots. He brings a lot to the table. But not just him. You still have Kevin Puryear, Mitchell Smith, Russell Woods, all those guys are coming in, blocking shots and grabbing rebounds. Just little things that will win games for us."
Sophomore guard Terrence Phillips
On Reed Nikko's solid performance…
"It gave us some energy. Not only Reed, but Jordan Geist and Willie Jackson, those three guys came in and they gave us some energy off of the bench. And I think that's what we really needed tonight in some certain moments. That was crucial in that moment."
On his reaction from the game…
"Honestly, nobody's going to play perfect every night, nobody's going to play good every night. This is one of those nights for us. Thank God we got it out of the way early. So, like Coach said, we're going to get back to the gym tomorrow, we're going to get better these next five days by watching film, working in the weight room and on the court. And just get better. We have Alabama A&M next week, and we're going to take it one day at a time and gradually get better as a team. I don't expect us to play like that again."
On offensive struggles in the first half…
"I think we just played too fast. We wanted to push the tempo, we wanted to get out and go. But I think offensively in the first half we just played too fast. We got away from everything we've been doing. I don't know if it was the fans. I don't know if it was just our first game, in general. In the second half we slowed it down. I thought we executed a lot better than we did the first half in the half court set. Defensively, we were getting stops, we just couldn't execute in the open court."
