Jan. 24, 2015
Recap | Box Score | Notes | USATSI 
| Williams’ & Adams’ Photos | Howell’s Photos
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
Opening Comments:
“We’re pretty disappointed. This game came down to a couple of key turnovers and a couple of key possessions… Our defense in the second half was not nearly as good as it was in the first half. Congrats to [LSU]. They made plays and we didn’t. Luke [Kornet] played maybe the best game he has had on our team. Wade [Baldwin IV] played well too.”
On Vanderbilt’s last possession of overtime:
“We ran a play and two guys went at one… Our next option was to have Shelton [Mitchell] take control and make a play for someone… It looked like there was some contact. I need to see it again to be sure. We got it six feet from the goal and we had a clean look at it.”
On looking for scorers:
“Riley [LaChance] had six assists and no turnovers. He played hard and played a lot… It’s disappointing when you need to win one and have guys who don’t understand how important it is to give their best. Overall, we played hard but had one or two guys who didn’t give us enough to win.”
On Vanderbilt forward Luke Kornet:
“We tell him all the time that it’s not what happens to you, it’s your response to what happens. Luke got put on the bench and he responded. Good for him. That’s what he should do.”
On finishing:
“We talk about finishing and we didn’t finish… We didn’t guard well in the second half. Lesson learned. We have to keep learning… LSU has a really talented team.
“You make your own breaks. We’ll win when we deserve to win and when we do enough to win. We have to keep trying to get better.”
On finding Vanderbilt’s best five players each night:
“There can be a tremendous variation in each performance. Luke [Kornet] is a perfect example. He doesn’t scratch at Kentucky but does well tonight. It’s a challenge as a coach to figure out who your best five guys are.”
Vanderbilt guard Wade Baldwin IV
On the losing streak potentially causing the team to lose confidence:“No, I don’t think it’s affecting us. We prepare every game to win, we never think we’re going to lose. Even against Kentucky, everybody had us losing – there was a 98% chance we were going to lose. But we played them hard, we played them to the wire. We’re not ever giving up. We’ve got too much talent to give up, and we owe it to our seniors – James, Shelby, all of those guys. We want to make it a happy season for them.”
On getting every guy in the rotation to play well:
“I think we all just need to play hard. I think if everybody dedicates themselves to playing hard and playing to the best of their ability and doing their job, I think we might see a little bit of change. I know Matthew’s been on a shooting streak, didn’t really shoot well today. I mean, things like that could have affected today. But, that’s all I can say about that.”
Vanderbilt forward Luke Kornet
On the frustration with losing the game:
“Every loss is a big pain, but especially this one because we didn’t feel like we had it for a while, and then it was in our grasp and we let it slip out. Especially when you go into overtime, you just want to win the game so badly it definitely hurts when it goes the other way.”
On running out of gas towards the end of the game:
“I don’t think we ran out of gas. I think we made some silly plays, some silly passes, some shots didn’t go in and some calls didn’t go our way. There’s nothing we can do about that really. I mean, you can make the shot, and you cannot get the call or get the call.”
On not being able to drive in as much as the game progressed:
“They made it a little harder to get to it just by pushing it out and denying it a little bit. They were more ready for us after we hit it with them a few times. They weren’t hopping off our guards in the beginning, so that was giving us layups when they were setting good screens. They started adjusting their defense a little bit to make it harder for us to run through the stuff.”
On whether they deserved to win the past few games:
“I mean you can play well, and you can feel like you’re playing really well in the game. But really deserving to win just takes a whole extra bump and stuff like that. Some of the games we’ve gone out, we play hard, and we just don’t make shots. No matter how much you give into it, if you make certain plays at the right time, I don’t think you can lose.”
On the success he had in the game:
“Every single time I go to the court, whether it’s starting or off the bench, I just go out and play as hard as I can. I mean, a couple of the first few buckets my teammates really helped me out with them, like them hopping off the guards; that’s pretty much buckets for Riley and Matt, who were setting the screens. Of course it’s a little different, but I pretty much had the same approach every time I headed to the court.”
LSU Coach Johnny Jones
Opening statement:
“We knew going into this game that it would be very difficult and a tough task for us tonight. I am very familiar with Vanderbilt and how they have played throughout the year. They have had a really tough schedule, even coming into conference play. The venues that they have played in, the competition that they have played, in their scores they have been right there, they have been extremely close. Coming back home here, I knew that for them they would play extremely well and I thought they did that in the first half. I thought Kornet played extremely well for them in the first half, and Baldwin as well. Going three-for-three from the three-point line, and they did a great job defensively holding us to 30-something percent shooting. I thought the second half, our guys settled in, played much better and executed on the offensive end and we were fortunate to get the game there in overtime and to be able to execute and win down the stretch.”
On having had experience with games like this in the SEC already:
“One thing is that we don’t panic, we’ve been there before and we’ve seen it. We’ve been through it on several occasions, and I thought tonight, again, once we were able to get the game there in overtime we were able to get the tip which I thought was important and strike first, making sure we score and put the pressure back on our opponent. Then we were able to come back and get another bucket and be up four. I thought that was helpful and beneficial for us, but at the same time, they continued to battle and play and we had to play it through right there until the end because of the shooters they have on the floor.”
On predicting who was going to take Vanderbilt’s last shot:
“I wasn’t sure exactly who would take it, they have a lot of weapons out on the floor. They’ve got Jones there as well that can go inside, they can bury with Jones and I thought he was able to finish in there. But the combination of guys that they have in there, they are a threat and you just have to be down and ready to play. So we weren’t sure who exactly they would go to for that situation.”
On LSU’s defense:
“First of all, we needed to do a much better job on the perimeter and putting pressure on the ball handler. We needed to disrupt it there, and try and block and get them to cut and channel and not allow guys to run so free. Unfortunately, the first half, Kornet got a couple of layups because we did not do a great job with the cross-screen action underneath the basket. But I thought we did a much better job down the stretch.”
On Tim Quarterman’s deflection at the end of the second half:
“It put them in a position where they had to scramble and they didn’t have the freedom or the time that they needed. They pretty much rushed a shot there at the end. I thought defensively, Tim did a great job. But at the same time, I thought LaChance had two huge baskets right there in the lane to keep the score tight.”
On never leading in score in the second half until overtime:
“It’s hard and you have to put a lot into it. We talked about it prior to the game, how deep we were going to have to dig offensively and defensively to make plays. We certainly had to dig deep for this game, especially in the overtime. To get the game into overtime, and then we had to continue to play extremely hard to continue to execute against a good, solid defensive basketball team to make plays. It was certainly a grind game for us.”
On his guys’ varying performances in the game:
“I think it shows us the versatility of our team. We’ve got Aaron, Jarell, and Jordan who can make plays. I thought they were all excellent in our second half. And then our guards, Hornsby knocked down a huge three for us there and Jalyn knocked down two big threes for us as well. And then Tim was able to get in the paint. So it’s really tough for you to single out who they are going to take away from us, or double off on someone. Because those guys are very capable and have the chance to hurt someone, and that’s what they were able to do tonight.”
On when he felt like they had won the game:
“Well there’s three seconds in the game and you know you need both of those (free throws), because they are a great three-point shooting team and a high percentage as well. We needed to get both of them down because they are very capable. After the second one, I felt better at that time about the outcome.”
On whether free throw shooting was a big concern going into overtime:
“Well, look at Tim who had just gone to the line and not gotten a couple of big free throws for us. And there in the overtime, unfortunately he missed both of them. Jarell I thought stepped up in a crucial situation, under a lot of pressure, and in a great environment was able to execute there from the free throw line.”