postgame quotes
POSTGAME QUOTES Memphis vs. Bryant – Dec. 9, 2017 – FedExForum - Memphis, Tenn.
Memphis Head Coach Tubby Smith Congratulations coach, you’re a genius, you put a freshman in, and all he does is hit six threes. I don’t know what a genius is, I’m not genius. Jamal Johnson was most deserving of the start, he proved me right in giving him that start. I was happy to see Kareem Brewton Jr. play with more poise coming off the bench, and that may be the best thing for him. Certainly Jamal proved that he deserved to be in the starting lineup, not just with the way he shot the ball, but with the way he defended. He’s a fundamentally sound player, he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, and he doesn’t take a lot of chances on defense. 26 assists, the most this year. You talked about having to move the ball better, and certainly you did. You got the threes, and your team really did well against the zone. Well, when you look at Jeremiah, that’s really his job, to distribute the basketball, he led us with seven assists. Jimario is probably our second-best passer, he had four assists. And you’re right, that’s how we have to score, we don’t have anybody that can just go make plays. Nobody has that, nobody does that. You have to have teamwork, team effort. I think today was indicative of the way we’re supposed to play. Obviously playing a team like Bryant, they’re not at the level of some of the teams that we’ve played, but they can make shots, they can hit the three, and we knew that. That’s been our Achilles heel, is defending the three. We tried our man-to-man early on, but we had to go to our zone, and eventually to our switching-man defense, to be effective. And really, we changed the tone of the game right there at the end of the first half. We had about 11 straight stops, and that was huge. They went almost eight minutes without scoring, with 10 turnovers. We talked about it before the game, but hitting threes, you’ve been a 26 percent shooting team, but that changed today. I asked you how to change that, you said get better looks. Yeah, and get better shots, and better shooters. We’ve either been bad shooters taking bad shots or good shooters taking bad shots. We’ve been talking about it and working hard to get better shots. We took open shots, uncontested shots, we got more layups. We got to the free throw line today, even though our free throw shooting was awful. I thought we lost our concentration in the second half. We only had five turnovers in the first half, and we ended with 16. I told the players as they went in the game, your lack of concentration is not going to get you more playing time. That’s something we need to work on.
You did get to play a lot of people. And, for the first time, we got to see Big Egypt. I know since his injury he gained a little bit of weight, but we could see why you were so high about him. He came in weighing 300 something pounds. We got him down to 275, then he messes his knee up, he ballooned back up to 285. He showed me a lot of toughness today, he’s still trying to get in shape. But I was impressed, he has soft hands. He made a good pass out of the post, he had a nice little jumper, just barely missed there. He’s got soft touch, soft hands. We’re going to need him against big, strong teams, I think he’s going to be very effective for us.
POSTGAME QUOTES Memphis vs. Bryant – Dec. 9, 2017 – FedExForum - Memphis, Tenn.
Bryant Head Coach Tim O’Shea Opening statement… “The downside was the end of the half, 3:53 to go and I think it was a one-point game. We just had a bad run at the end of the half. The exclamation point was probably that crazy three. Our redshirt freshman made a mistake in terms of just holding on to the ball – just throw it at the other basket. They had all the momentum going in to halftime. In the second half, they are a talented team and we could never get on the run. It’s hard with a young team playing a power school on the road to come back from a big deficit. Again, we’re a work in progress right now. Memphis has got a very athletic team, and I think they are going to do well this year.” On play from Brandon Carroll and Ikenna Ndugba… “Brandon (Carroll) is a redshirt freshman and the last two games he has shown us a ton of progress. He’s an interesting kid in that he didn’t have a big high school career. We redshirted him last year just to kind of teach him how to play basketball because he is a very good athlete. He is starting to really come around for us. Ike (Ndugba) is a really good point guard for us. He had 17 (points) and 11 (assists), so he gave us everything he could give us.” On finding late momentum to build on for next game against Louisville… “It was good to see (Ryan) Layman make those shots down the stretch and we started moving the ball pretty well against their zone. Louisville is always a huge challenge, but I think our guys are looking forward to it. We did have a little run there toward the end, which is something to build on.”
Memphis Head Coach Tubby Smith Congratulations coach, you’re a genius, you put a freshman in, and all he does is hit six threes. I don’t know what a genius is, I’m not genius. Jamal Johnson was most deserving of the start, he proved me right in giving him that start. I was happy to see Kareem Brewton Jr. play with more poise coming off the bench, and that may be the best thing for him. Certainly Jamal proved that he deserved to be in the starting lineup, not just with the way he shot the ball, but with the way he defended. He’s a fundamentally sound player, he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes, and he doesn’t take a lot of chances on defense. 26 assists, the most this year. You talked about having to move the ball better, and certainly you did. You got the threes, and your team really did well against the zone. Well, when you look at Jeremiah, that’s really his job, to distribute the basketball, he led us with seven assists. Jimario is probably our second-best passer, he had four assists. And you’re right, that’s how we have to score, we don’t have anybody that can just go make plays. Nobody has that, nobody does that. You have to have teamwork, team effort. I think today was indicative of the way we’re supposed to play. Obviously playing a team like Bryant, they’re not at the level of some of the teams that we’ve played, but they can make shots, they can hit the three, and we knew that. That’s been our Achilles heel, is defending the three. We tried our man-to-man early on, but we had to go to our zone, and eventually to our switching-man defense, to be effective. And really, we changed the tone of the game right there at the end of the first half. We had about 11 straight stops, and that was huge. They went almost eight minutes without scoring, with 10 turnovers. We talked about it before the game, but hitting threes, you’ve been a 26 percent shooting team, but that changed today. I asked you how to change that, you said get better looks. Yeah, and get better shots, and better shooters. We’ve either been bad shooters taking bad shots or good shooters taking bad shots. We’ve been talking about it and working hard to get better shots. We took open shots, uncontested shots, we got more layups. We got to the free throw line today, even though our free throw shooting was awful. I thought we lost our concentration in the second half. We only had five turnovers in the first half, and we ended with 16. I told the players as they went in the game, your lack of concentration is not going to get you more playing time. That’s something we need to work on.
You did get to play a lot of people. And, for the first time, we got to see Big Egypt. I know since his injury he gained a little bit of weight, but we could see why you were so high about him. He came in weighing 300 something pounds. We got him down to 275, then he messes his knee up, he ballooned back up to 285. He showed me a lot of toughness today, he’s still trying to get in shape. But I was impressed, he has soft hands. He made a good pass out of the post, he had a nice little jumper, just barely missed there. He’s got soft touch, soft hands. We’re going to need him against big, strong teams, I think he’s going to be very effective for us.
POSTGAME QUOTES Memphis vs. Bryant – Dec. 9, 2017 – FedExForum - Memphis, Tenn.
Bryant Head Coach Tim O’Shea Opening statement… “The downside was the end of the half, 3:53 to go and I think it was a one-point game. We just had a bad run at the end of the half. The exclamation point was probably that crazy three. Our redshirt freshman made a mistake in terms of just holding on to the ball – just throw it at the other basket. They had all the momentum going in to halftime. In the second half, they are a talented team and we could never get on the run. It’s hard with a young team playing a power school on the road to come back from a big deficit. Again, we’re a work in progress right now. Memphis has got a very athletic team, and I think they are going to do well this year.” On play from Brandon Carroll and Ikenna Ndugba… “Brandon (Carroll) is a redshirt freshman and the last two games he has shown us a ton of progress. He’s an interesting kid in that he didn’t have a big high school career. We redshirted him last year just to kind of teach him how to play basketball because he is a very good athlete. He is starting to really come around for us. Ike (Ndugba) is a really good point guard for us. He had 17 (points) and 11 (assists), so he gave us everything he could give us.” On finding late momentum to build on for next game against Louisville… “It was good to see (Ryan) Layman make those shots down the stretch and we started moving the ball pretty well against their zone. Louisville is always a huge challenge, but I think our guys are looking forward to it. We did have a little run there toward the end, which is something to build on.”
