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Vanderbilt vs. Oregon Quotes 11/30/2005 Vanderbilt vs. Oregon November 30, 2005 Memorial Gymnasium
Vanderbilt Guard Mario Moore
On the last-second shot: “Coach Stallings said my attitude has been great. I’ve worked hard in practice. It’s not easy coming off a suspension with people making a big deal out of it. Coach said with an attitude like mine, shots like that will fall. I’m lucky that this one did. Coach said I had three seconds, which meant three dribbles, and to get as close to the basket as possible. I was looking for Shan [Foster], but his man stayed with him. It felt good when I let it go.”
On the team: “We have a really good team and I couldn’t steal Derrick Byar’s glory tonight. He put us on his back. When someone does something like that, it shows good leadership. Coach told him to wake up one morning and know about yourself what I already know about you.”
On coming back: “I’ve been through a lot, both on and off the court. I had a lot of support from my team, fans, administration, and everyone else. Anything is possible. I just woke up and kept going forward.”
Vanderbilt Forward Derrick Byars
On his play tonight: “I’ve just been patient and playing into our offense. I’ve been comfortable and it was only a matter of time until I broke out. I stayed positive and played with my teammates. I wanted to be as assertive as I can and not just get points. I sensed Shan was struggling tonight. Oregon keyed in on him. We just had to step up and get it done.”
Oregon Head Coach Ernie Kent Opening Statement “The adversity this team faced, just to get to the ‘Hail Mary’ shot at the end, was tremendous. Vanderbilt has a great home court and now I know why. We had to fight through some tough calls, I thought it was a very well officiated game, but we had to fight through some tough calls and to still put yourselves in position to win tells me a lot about my team.”
On the final play “We knew the way they lined up they only had one play they could run. They could either throw a full-court pass to one of their talented shooters or they could give it to their point guard and let him run down the floor. When they brought their big guy up we knew what they were going to do. We were trying to get Ivan to come back so he could double team. He finally did but their guy was able to get by Ivan and Aaron was still in front of him, but he made a very, very tough shot. I’ve been on both sides of these before and there’s nothing you can do. We did everything right down the stretch, that’s just the way it goes.”
On whether or not to foul to prevent a three-point attempt “You’ve got to have confidence in you defense. They’re at home and they’re a good free-throw shooting team. Then there’s a chance they could miss and get a tip-in and you’ve just given them the game. You don’t want to give them a chance to beat you. Make them make a tough shot, which is exactly what they did.”
On his players’ performance “It was a great game from Malik. But I thought everyone did something well. There were no bad performances. We did everything well down the stretch, especially for our first game on the road.”
On moving past a difficult loss “I won’t let there be a hangover — win or lose. You can’t get too up, and if we win we’d be sky-high right now, or too down. We’ve got too much basketball left and you’ve just got to learn from the experiences of this game and try to get better.
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