Mizzou Men's Basketball Head Coach Kim Anderson - Monday, Feb. 6
Opening statement…
"First of all, obviously we're happy to have played well enough to win this weekend against Arkansas. The game was, obviously the most important thing, but I think as important was the amount of money we were able to raise for pediatric cancer. The last figure I heard was $54,000. Certainly, we're grateful to all the people that came to the game and all the people who came to the fashion show that morning and gave money, however they did it. It is a tremendous cause, I'm happy we were able to. That's over $100,000 in two years. Plus we won both games, so that's a positive too.
"The Arkansas game. When you make shots, you look a lot better. I thought we came out ready to play. I thought we executed maybe as well as we have in a long time. We fought off their run in the second half. They did a great job on the boards. That was one area that concerned us, but we did not turn the ball over much and they did, they turned it over 17 times, we turned it over 10. Certainly, whenever you play against them you worry about the pressure, and I thought for the most part we handled it pretty well. Had some guys step up and play well. You know, K.J. [Walton] I thought did a great job of getting the ball to the basket, made a three. Kevin [Puryear], I thought huge rebounder late in the game, enabled us to get the lead back I think back to four. Cullen [VanLeer] really did a great job in the first half. I thought he shot the ball with a lot of confidence and helped us build a halftime lead. Then I thought Jordan [Barnett] did a great job coming off the bench, making some shots, getting a few rebounds. Terrence [Phillips] was solid. I thought his defense was really good late in the game. He still, I'm sure if you watched the game, he still made a foul or two there that I thought were unnecessary. He's got to make better decisions in that respect, but I thought he did a good job of running the show. Russ [Woods] was solid, Russ did a good job on [Moses] Kingsley. Kingsley only scored four points and Russ made his free throws. I thought he did a pretty good job on the inside. We haven't won in a while, guys, so certainly we're happy to win the game. Hopefully we can build off that, get some confidence, and play well Wednesday when we go to Texas A&M."
On building on Saturday's performance against Arkansas…
"I hope this gives them some confidence. We've been close several times. Really, I think the most amazing statistic from last weekend was that 45 hours before we got beat by 39 points in Gainesville, Florida, we came back and beat Arkansas. Two NCAA Tournament teams back-to-back, one of them beat us by 39 and we were able to beat the other one at home, so I think that says a lot about our guys. I'm hoping that'll give them some confidence. Again though, we made shots and when you made shots, you look a lot better. We're shooting 39 percent from the field in the conference games. If we were shooting normal, we probably would have more than one win, but I was real proud of the way they beat them, because Arkansas did a great job. We knew that they'd make a run. We talked about that at halftime, that 13 points is nothing. They made a run and we were able to fight it off and finish the game. So from that standpoint, I think that's obviously a positive."
On the value of being in the right spot for VanLeer…
"Well, both sides, offensively and defensively. Offensively, he can tell guys where to go on the floor if they're not in the right spot. For a while there, we kind of played him at point guard. We played him at kind of a backup point guard spot early in the year, simply because he knew everything we wanted to do and he knew where every guy should be. And then from a defensive standpoint, I think he studies the game. I think he studies the opponent. One of his biggest values I think is his help-side defense. A guy who we always talk about pulling to the basketball or getting to the middle of the floor, or we call it get to the white line. He's almost always in the right spot. That doesn't mean that when they kick the ball out to his man that he gets back there fast enough, or somebody drives by him. But from a schematic standpoint, he understands the game. And he tries to block out. Obviously size is his limitation. It'll be tough Wednesday when we're playing Tonny Trocha-Morelos because he's a big dude, so it'll be tough but he'll be there trying."