Jan. 22, 2011
Recap | Box Score | Notes | AP Photo Gallery 
Vanderbilt vs St Mary’s
Player Quotes
January 22, 2011
Memorial Gymnasium
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
Opening Comments:
“I’m really pleased with how my team played. We were competitive after the first eight minutes of the game with purpose and intensity and obviously shot well. That made a big difference. We had more purpose with our screening… When we can shoot from three well and get to the line a lot, that’s probably a good sign.”
On St. Mary’s:
“St. Mary’s is a much better team than we saw today. We feel good about winning… We had a lot of turnovers, but other than the turnovers, the rest was really good.”
On Vanderbilt’s Three-Point Shooting:
“When we took care of the ball, we had good offense. Everybody with the exception of Lance [Goulbourne] seemed to be on target from three, and he made a big one. All phases of our offense complimented the others.”
On the Game’s Momentum Shifts:
“The game is going to have momentum shifts. [St. Mary’s] came out and started the second half better than we did. We came back and got the momentum shifted back in our direction, which was a big thing.”
On Lance Goulbourne’s Rebounding:
“He has a gift that helps someone be a great rebounder: he’s an excellent two-foot jumper… He can rebound above the rim and can rebound in areas that aren’t his own.”
On Sending a Message to the NCAA Tournament Committee:
“We’re not trying to send a message. We’re just trying to be as good as we can be. What matters most is how we fare in the league and how we do in league play. We just want to play well.”
Vanderbilt sophomore guard John Jenkins
On playing man-to-man defense:
“We knew we had to buckle down and take the challenge. I had to guard Dellavedova and that was definitely hard for me. I haven’t had to guard a guy like him yet this year so that was a challenege and I think I did a pretty good job with it and so did the rest of our guys.”
On the plan going into the game:
“They’re a big time good team and they were on an 11-game winning streak or something so we wanted to go out there and play as hard as we could.”
Junior guard Brad Tinsley
On winning the game:
“It feels great you and it gives a definite boost in our confidence as a team. I think they’re a little bit better than they played today, you know they’re ranked twenty one, this is only their third loss so they’re used to winning and I thought we just played well from tip to buzzer.”
On the importance of defending St. Mary’s outside shooters:
“That was one of our big emphasis in the game. They’ve got three guys on the perimeter that shoot well over 40%, which you know we thought we had to get to them on kick-outs or drives or whatever and I thought our guys did a great job on the perimeter guarding the three.”
Junior forward Lance Goulbourne
On the game plan going into the second half:
“Get some stops and get some scores really. We just had to protect the basket and not let them get any inside touches or anything like that. We wanted to maintain our energy and try to spread the lead as much as possible.”
On out-rebounding St. Mary’s:
“I mean it’s nice to beat teams on the boards. We had 13 offensive rebounds they had 15, we almost beat them on their own glass. It’s good we want to get to the boards and we want to maintain our boards and make sure we don’t give up second or third chance points.”
St. Mary’s Head Coach Randy Bennett
On Vanderbilt’s Defense:
“They are big and long [and] play a good defense. It is hard to score inside and they are good on the perimeter because they are so long. They were well prepared.”
On Pressure for the Guards to Score Outside:
“[Vanderbilt] takes away the option of scoring on the inside because of [Festus] Ezeli. They limit other options. You have to make good choices and make shots – we didn’t shoot great.”
On Vanderbilt Head Coach Stallings Being Surprised at the Game Margin:
“Yeah, I am too. I think they’re two pretty even teams. They beat us in threes and pounded on the boards. They shot the ball well and I credit them on that. We didn’t get to shoot a foul in the first half… We have to do a better job at getting the ball to the basket and getting to the foul line.”
On Lessons Learned for March by Playing a Non-Conference Game:
“I was thinking about that with this game. I would rather have played them earlier so we had more time to adjust. It’s hard to get a team like Vanderbilt to come out and play us at home and they did [last season], so we tried to be accommodating in finding a good time for them. We need to be more mentally tough on the road… We can’t play the same on the road as we do at home. Our next two on the road will be tough and we need to learn.”
St. Mary’s #4 Matthew Dellavedova
On the difficulty creating shots:
“Yeah, they played pretty good defense. When we did get looks, we had some good looks, but we just didn’t knock them down.”
On some things not going the Gaels’ way:
“Yeah, definitely, it could have been a different ending if we had connected on one of those [plays]. They might have under more pressure, taken the crowd out of it. Yeah, we did have chances, but we just didn’t make the most out of them today.”
On playing on the road:
“I think that playing on the road – and we have our next three on the road – in tough places to play, you can learn a lot of lessons, and we have to learn from today. Hopefully it helps us later in the season.”
