South Carolina 63, Mizzou 53
Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Kim Anderson
Opening Statement…
“I thought in the first half that we played extremely hard, maybe not extremely well, it wasn’t a very pretty half for either team. I thought they made a couple of shots that were tough shots but I was pretty pleased where we were at halftime. We held them to 26 points. You always hope that you’ll shoot the ball better in the second half and I know we didn’t. I’m really proud of Russell Woods and K.J. Walton. K.J. did a really good job defensively on Thornwell. Russell got some points and attacked the basket well. In the second half, we were getting beat on the boards. It doesn’t statistically show up but they got a lot of loose and 50/50 balls and we have to get those. We can’t give away possessions. I’m proud of Russell for playing hard. We all play hard but we didn’t play well enough to win.”
On first half play…
“I thought defensively we played pretty well. They had a couple of shots at the shot clock; they faked one in and then they made another one. I felt good that we were down four. We didn’t shoot the ball well and only three of our guys scored. They make it so hard for you to do what you want to do that you need to be able to make plays. We didn’t do it consistently. We turned the ball over 15 times and you can’t turn it over that much. They turned it over 14 and 10 of those were in the first half. The 1-for-17 from three is hard. Obviously they are the best 3-point defensive team in the league and they’ve padded that lead tonight. I thought we settled and we really had a hard time getting the ball in for a while. I thought we started getting it inside and good things started happening. We probably took some quick threes that we didn’t need to.”
On lack of offensive production…
“They make it really hard. You have to run a lot of ball screen and dribble plays. It is hard to come down and pass the ball from guard to wing and run a play like you draw up. We knew coming in that it would be tough. I thought Jordan Barnett and Kevin Puryear had some looks and they didn’t make them. It’s been the story of our season. We have to get all the guys playing well together in one night, for two halves. One night one guy steps up and one night the next guy. I thought toward the end they were getting the 50/50 balls. We had the chance to cut the lead but we just couldn’t get the ball, not because we weren’t trying, but we just couldn’t get it.”
Mizzou senior forward Russell Woods
On the difference between the last game and tonight’s game…
“I just felt like the refs let us play. The refs let us play. It was a big difference. They allowed two teams that want to play aggressive to play.”
On matching South Carolina’s physicality…
“I think we were pretty physical. Second half, like coach said, we didn’t get some of the rebounds that we should have, especially me. I had probably six at the half and ended up with eight for the game. I should have had way more rebounds than that. That’s what I felt. It was the rebounding.”
On Mizzou getting over the hump…
“I think we are very close at times in the game. I believe the whole team plays hard. We never try to give up. We believe in each other each every game, every practice. So I believe each game that we are right there.”
Mizzou sophomore guard K.J. Walton
On South Carolina’s ability to answer Mizzou’s scoring…
“That’s just the story of the season, you know. We’ll go score, and then we can’t get a stop. We have to figure something out. But that’s the big reason we lost that game.”
South Carolina Head Coach Frank Martin
Opening Statement…
“Obviously, not a great offensive performance by us but Missouri had a lot to do with it. Watching them on film it is easy to see that they fight you, the guard you, their two big kids are very physical at the rim and our big kids didn’t answer well for the physicality of the game, so we never got anything in the paint. I don’t know the points in the paint were but they probably kicked out tails. So we’ve got to get better there. You get a win on the road you take it, you get on the plane and go home, fix your problems and get back on up.”
On his personal record at Mizzou Arena…
“I’ve come in here with some real good teams and I’ve come in her with a couple bad teams and winning here has always been real hard for us. I remember we came in here one year and we were both top ten in the country, that’s the year we went to the Elite Eight, we played our hearts out and couldn’t win. This is a hard building to play in…I struggle putting things in perspective for our team because I am right in the middle of it right now but I guess if you thing about it this way, we are 1-2-3-1 in road league games right now, that’s pretty good compared to where we were at before. You can probably count on one hand how many road league games our school has won since the year 2000. So, for us to be where we are at right now I will take it any way we can.”
On going five minutes without a point…
“That’s the third time we’ve had this this year. It’s unbelievable. We have to start better offensively. We play hard. I’m a little disappointed with our not answering the bell to the physicality of the game but we do play hard but offensively we are not starting games real good. I’ve got to figure out a way to fix that right now. That is the one thing that right now is bothering me. We didn’t start well against Florida, we didn’t start well against Kentucky, we didn’t start well against Auburn, we didn’t start well today. We have got to start better off. But, we spend a lot of time on our defense, I mean there is a reason for it. To win on the road you’re not going to outscore home teams. You need to go out there and figure out a way to survive. You’ve got to scrap and claw and we try to do it through our defense.”
