Nov. 5, 2007
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings:
Opening statement:
“In some ways, it was just about what we expected. In some ways, not. I didn’t think they’d have somebody get 30. It was a little bit of a weird game. They got a unique style that they’re pretty good at. It’s good despite the fact that you don’t play the way and it makes you look bad a little bit. We won’t see anybody else that plays like that the whole year. It’s good to run into because you have to defend their screen, which we did ok for a while, and then we wouldn’t for a while. They really played a nice game and had long possessions and kept the ball and threw it around and threw it around. Right now, we’re not ready obviously to defend for 40 minutes in that way. It was a good situation to be put in. Even though I am disappointed with the way we performed, I would rather have that to learn from than to beat somebody by 30 or 40 and not really gain anything from it. From a standpoint of being in close games and having to make some plays and having to execute and make some plays and make some free throws and stuff like that, I thought it was good for us.”
On getting outrebounded 44-35:
“That’s a bother. We’ve got a couple of guys that don’t they have any responsibility to rebound. I even told the team before the game that certain guys are going to have to do a great job on the boards because we have a couple that don’t think they have any responsibility to help us defensive rebounding ability. We got out aggressed in the second half. When he (Jim Boone) got thrown out of the game, they got real aggressive, and we didn’t respond. That’s disappointing.”
On A.J. Ogilvy’s performance:
“He’s a good player. He’s got a lot of room to get better. He’s a good player that has good hands and good instincts for the game. He normally makes his foul shots a lot better than he did tonight. I’m sure he had some nerves and stuff going on too. He’ll be a good player. We’re excited about him. We just got to keep helping him get better.”
On A.J. Ogilvy getting to the foul line 12 times in the game:
“It will be nice. Hopefully if people are making runs we’ll be smart enough. We weren’t tonight, but we’ll be smart enough to throw the ball inside and get the run stopped and get to the foul line and make some foul shots. We shot the ball very poorly from the foul line for us tonight but still shot 70 percent. I would anticipate that we would be a pretty good foul shooting team.”
Vanderbilt Players:
Guard Alex Gordon:
On what the team talked about after the game:
“We basically talked about how we had lapses on defense. We came out in the second half and had a good little push. We had a couple of stops. I think they hit like 10 points in a row and they just came in bunches after that. Everything they threw up pretty much went in.”
On A.J. Ogilvy and Shan Foster:
“A.J. is a great player. He’s what we’ve been missing in the past. On any given night, Shan Foster is going to be Shan Foster. We know he’s going to hit shots. A.J. just showed what he can bring to our team. I think once we get our defense clicking, it will be pretty good for us.”
On what the team can learn from this game:
“It’s tough. We just got to come back. We’ve actually been having some great practices defensively. It’s tough, especially having a day off tomorrow will be tough. Like you said, it’s a good learning game. We got to go to the drawing board and continue to work hard and get ready for Wednesday’s practice.”
