Dec. 9, 2015
Recap | Box Score | Notes | USATSI Photos 
| Russell’s Photos
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
Opening Comments:
“We’re pretty disappointed, but the same things that plagued us at Baylor plagued us tonight. We have to learn to play better and we can get on top of this. Congrats to Dayton. They played hard. They played with more toughness and grit than we did, especially in the second half.”
On What Vanderbilt Needs to Do Late in Games:
“Play harder. We came out in the beginning of the second half and were literally, on defense, standing around. They shot 59% in the second half.”
On Vanderbilt’s Hustle:
“Our bench is a little shorter. Earlier, there was a thread of taking guys out.”
On How the Team Misses Luke Kornet:
“His toughness. He’s probably the toughest guy on our team… He’s our best defender, but we don’t have him now. We have to have other people play better.”
On Committing Four Turnovers at the End of the First Half:
“Inexplicable… Guys took turns jumping up and passing the ball to [Dayton]… That changed the momentum going into halftime.”
On Dayton’s 15 Offensive Rebounds:
“They played harder than we did.”
On Vanderbilt’s Defense:
“Our zone was okay. It felt like they hit a few shots at the end of the shot clock… Things go your way when you play harder. We can survive and thrive on offense. We’re committed to offense.”
On Luke Kornet’s Injury:
“The official diagnosis was a torn MCL. It’ll probably be in the neighborhood of six weeks.”
On Vanderbilt’s Second Half Shooting:
“In the first half, we were getting shots in transition… In the second half, we were playing against set defenses since they were making shots every possession.”
On When the Team Expects to Get Back Camron Justice:
“We hope sometime in January.”
JR C Damian Jones
On missed opportunities in the second half:
“We missed some opportunities, but we were really lacking defense in the second half, which really hurt us in the long run. Coming out of the first half we had those turnovers then, coming out in the second half, we played lackadaisical and just didn’t come out ready.”
On playing without the injured Luke Kornet:
“Everybody has to pick him up. Everybody has an increased role on the team, so we’ve just got to come out with more intensity.”
On if Dayton did anything differently from half to half:
“It was on us. Our defensive intensity wasn’t there in the second half. It’s on us.”
On playing differently with Luke Kornet out:
“I just show a bigger presence and play more defense, since Luke’s out. But, other than that, I have a pretty similar role.”
SO PG Wade Baldwin IV
On the second half:
“I guess embarrassing. There’s no reason for us to be lackadaisical, like Damian mentioned. Regardless, if Luke [Kornet] is not playing, he’s a major factor for us but that’s no excuse. We’ve got all the tools to still be a great team and, for us to not go out there with intensity like we normally do in these past few games, it’s just been unacceptable.”
On the momentum shift at the end of the first half:
“The ball care at the end of the first half gave them a little spark. I think they had eight points and they were down eight at the end of the half. Again, we came out lackadaisical in the second half to start, which was on a couple of people on the team, including myself.”
On how to win without Luke Kornet in the lineup:
“Submit to coaching. Trust what they teach us in practice and review, review, review, practice, practice, practice, practice on your own. Get better individually as well as you can. That way, in a team environment, it can be better.”
On upcoming ten day layoff:
“It’s going to be a rough ten days. We need a lot of correcting because it’s unacceptable for a top 25 team to lose two games in a row, especially losing here on our home court like that.”
On how the guards can help ease the burden of losing Luke Kornet:
“It’s more than just Damian back there. I think it’s the perimeter guys handling their business up front. If you take care of that, their job is a lot easier, so that’s also on us perimeter guys.”
On moving forward from this loss:
“We just take these learning lessons, reflect in these ten days of practice that we’re about to go through, and get better for the Wofford game on the 19th, because we’re still taking it one game at a time.”
Dayton Head Coach Archie Miller
Opening Statement:
“Certainly a terrific win for our team. To come down here to play that caliber of a team. I thought we prepared well, I thought our guys were ready to play. There were a couple of moments in this game that I thought could have went away. The last time we sort of got hit in the mouth, there was a different response. And tonight was a little bit different. I felt the end of the first half was really important, it gave us some confidence at half time. And then I thought once we got our offense in front of our bench, it was a little easier to control it and some guys got some baskets to go in and we had some confidence. A good team win, Vanderbilt’s going to have an excellent season. Hopefully they can get big Kornet back, he’s a big, big factor in what they do. And as we keep moving forward, we’re just going to try to keep getting better as we head through the rest of our season.”
On Kornet not playing today:
“We didn’t find out until right before the game. The only thing that would have really changed is maybe the initial starting lineup on who defended who. Obviously we had the two big guys in there, it was a little different, it was a little easier when Roberson checked in to put Kendall on him just based on size. That changed maybe the initial match-up, but not going to be able to do much with those two in the game in terms of the game plan. The fact that he didn’t play was a big thing for them. But we had to play the game and I thought our guys did a nice job.”
On all of the shots his team was able to make:
“I thought in the first half we missed some easy ones that could have helped our cause in the first half. We had some finishable plays in the first half that didn’t go down, they were running their offense with pretty much ease in the first half. They got a lot of good shots. I thought in the second half, the guys did a really nice job of starting to play with one another and getting the ball moving and getting some more player movement. We were much more of a stationary team in the first half. Once we started to move and get some inside-out and get some stuff, our guys started to be able to take advantage of the lanes and get to the basket. Our offense was much better in the second half, and to be honest with you it was a lot easier to communicate with them in the second half than it was in the first.”
On comparing the team to where they were at this time last year:
“Two different types of team, two really different types of teams. We have multiple freshmen on the floor at any given time right now, where a year ago we just had Darrell really. We had more veterans last year that had played together. We are a little bit better in my opinion in terms of transition this year than we were a year ago. We are much different in terms of being able to score and transition. And Steve is a lot different than we’ve ever had before, and you can just tell in and around the basket that he gives us something we haven’t had. But two different teams. This team is evolving as the season goes along and learning how to play with one another on the run. Tonight was pretty good. I thought a couple of our freshman got in there and didn’t shy away which was nice to see.”
On being pushed into the Top 25:
“I hope not. I just think it is irrelevant. I think it causes added clutter in our locker room, added clutter in our practice floor, added clutter in our film room. It means absolutely zero. We are better with a chip on our shoulder. We’re better off when we are underdogs, and I’ll take that. If they put us in the Top 25, I’ll take it but all that does is really it gives our fans a chance to tell these guys how good they are, and they aren’t very good right now. In terms of just being able to keep getting better. We have to keep getting better, and I think Saturday is one of those fat and happy opportunities when you feel really good about this one, you play a really good Chattanooga team on Saturday, you take your eyes off getting better the next couple days, you know what happens. So that is where my focus is right now. Top 25 and all of that stuff this time of year is really irrelevant. We want to be ready to go at the end of the year, that is when it is really important.”
On communicating with the players:
“It is hard to communicate, I thought our guys did a better job of playing on the run in the first half. Just being able to get organized with themselves I thought was pretty good. It is harder to get them to move though when they are away from you. It is harder to get them to start to trigger some action, and we weren’t able to really call a whole lot of plays. Second half, when they were inf front of us, it was easier to control and easier to communicate with some guys. I thought some of the baskets that we had were due to penetration and movement. We had different guys making plays, rather than just throwing the ball to the posts and standing around. So if we can take our second half offense and look at it, and get some guys to buy into that much more than just standing around, then I think we have a chance. But the good thing tonight was, and we talk about it a lot with this team, the thing that kills this team right now is turning the ball over. And we only turned it over 12 times. We want to play with 12 or fewer, and that is two games in a row with 22 turnovers. We had 22 turnovers with Xavier in the first half it felt like. If we can keep cleaning up our execution and not turning it over, I think we will get better on offense.”
On the officials missing a free throw after a timeout:
I haven’t seen it, I didn’t even catch it until they caught it. He made the free throw and I guess we got the ball back. I’ve never seen this scenario happen before, but the referees seemed to handle it like they knew what was going on.
On Kendall Pollard receiving a foul thought to be Steve McElvene’s:
“I definitely thought it was Steve, I did not even know that Kendall was in the play, It was a collision on the ball, and I thought it was on Steve but they gave it to Kendall. We’ll have to watch the film, but there is not much we can do about it we just had to adjust.”
On their rebounds tonight:
“Our team right now is based on about three things and we just kind of hone in on these three; it is playing extremely hard and getting back on defense and running back, and then the other two categories are taking care of the ball and rebounding. If you can rebound the ball and you don’t give teams second shots, and you don’t turn it over, most of the time you are going to have the chance of hanging around. I thought they gave us a good chance, especially at the start of the game when we were struggling we were getting second chance opportunities. The guys did a good job, Kendall had two offensive, Steve had five, I think even Sam Miller did a great job in there today, he got his hands on a bunch of balls. And we got some long ones too, which was good. I am happy for our guys, we just have to keep getting better and those categories mean a lot to us.”
On Darrell Davis:
“We needed Darrell to start to get out of [being down]. He’s not a backup, he’s not a reserve. He is a guy who has played a lot of minutes, made a lot of plays, made a lot of shots as a freshman. He should be more confident in there. I thought towards the end of the first half, it got him going a little bit. He made a big three, had a couple of breakaways, and he got us scoring. As he moves forward, hopefully this is a springboard for him to continue the productivity.”
JR F Kendall Pollard
On playing against Damian and the presence of scouts as a motivating factor:
“I wasn’t aware [that scouts were here]. I guess it was motivating but I didn’t know much about it before the game. I guarded Damian for a few possessions, but Steve [McElvene] did a really good job.”
On digging themselves out of a 16-point deficit after the first half:
“I wasn’t in the game when we got down by 16, but my team did a good job of responding. Darrell Davis hit a few big shots, a few big layups and we cut the lead to eight before the half.”
