Feb. 26, 2009
Audio: Listen to the entire teleconference at SECsports.com
Vanderbilt basketball head coach Kevin Stallings and South Carolina head coach Darrin Horn fielded questions about their matchup Saturday with the national media during Thursday’s SEC Teleconference. Find out what each coach had to say about the matchup.
Kevin Stallings, Vanderbilt head coach
Opening comments:
We’re very impressed with the job Darrin Horn (USC head coach) has done this year. They’re obviously having a terrific year, being in first place in the SEC East. We had a fairly competitive game with them at there place, but we had far too many turnovers to have any real chance to win the game in the end. We’ll have to do a better job of protecting the ball this time.
They’re a very hot team right now, and have turned into a very, very good team. It’s been impressive to watch from afar. Hopefully, we can play much better than we did last night (at Georgia), and be competitive and figure out a way to win a game.
Does your loss at Georgia rank as one of the more disappointing performances this season?
Yes, it does. I was very disappointed in our performance last night. I certainly give Georgia credit, but I was disappointed in the way in particular some of our guys either performed or didn’t perform, however you’d like to look at it.
How do you finish the season strong with your remaining games?
That’s a good question. At this time of year when your team is not in contention for an NCAA Tournament berth, it can be a challenge to keep your team engaged. I really did pretty much all that I knew to do and felt like I could do early in the week to set some goals and set some parameters and encourage these guys. Obviously, I misfired because we were not, in the first half of that game (at Georgia), any where close to where we needed to be emotionally to win a road game.
Do you think the NCAA should expand the use of Instant Replay?
I think there could be situations to where… we had a situation in the game last night where a foul was called on the wrong guy fairly early in the game. It was called on us, and I brought it to the official’s attention. I think they went back and checked or had somebody check, and they ended up getting it right and changing it later.
I think in an effort to get things right I would rather get things right than leave things up to human error.
Do you think there would need to be limitations to what you could review?
I’m sure you would. You can’t just go in and review anything, but I’m sure there would have to be some limitations and stipulations on what exactly that might govern. But, I’m sure it could be done.
Darrin Horn, South Carolina head coach
Opening comments:
I think we all know what a tough place Memorial Gym is to play for everybody. I think Vanderbilt is one of the teams in our league that has continued to make strides and has terrific, young athletic talent. It was a team we really struggled with at home. You combine that with the fact that we’re going on the road, and we’ll expect a very tough game.
How important is it for your team to stay focused against Vanderbilt?
We’ve been saying all year long that the important thing is to stay focused and keep controlling what we can control. Before the Kentucky game, everybody wanted to know how we’d handle a big game. Obviously, now they want to know how we’ll handle bouncing back from having a big game. But, it’s not the first time our team has come up with a big win this year. I think what’s made this team good is they’ve come back the next day regardless of the circumstance and found a way to get focused in and work hard. We’re not going to change our approach regardless of how those outcomes are good or bad.