Nov. 19, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Notes | AP Gallery 
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
On overall performance –
“If you didn’t care who won, that was a heck of a college basketball game…We’re obviously disappointed to not have won. We could’ve won. They played a little better than we did. They made a few more plays than we did. I thought we really battled in the second half. The zone was good to us. Mitchell, he was certainly the difference in the game. He was lights out. We should have had him covered on that last play. There was no reason for him to have gotten that shot on the last play. We just missed coverage didn’t do what we we’re coached to do. But he still had to make the shot and he did.
On Mitchell’s shooting performance down the stretch –
“He just got in a rhythm. We let him have a couple open looks and missed coverage a couple times. They ran a couple hand-off plays on us and we failed to play those properly…That’s why you play the games early in the season. You try to get those things corrected and work on them.”
On Vanderbilt’s final shot –
“We got a relatively clean look at the basket. When they know you’ve got to shoot a three, it shrinks up the court on you. If you only have to shoot a two there, now you’ve got the benefit of the whole court and it’s a little bit easier. We had to have three and I did a poor job in that timeout. I had a play that would have worked and I got talked out of it, so that’s my fault.”
Vanderbilt Guard John Jenkins
On Mitchell’s performance –
“He definitely got the hot hand. Penetration kind of hurt us. We had to help off, and when we helped off, they kicked it to him and he knocked it down. In the second half we had to do a better job of just sticking on him, so that hurt us in the long run.”
West Virginia Head Coach Bob Huggins
On Mitchell’s excellent shooting after a slow start –
“It’s a harder thing to do than what you think. I don’t know if you all play golf – I quit – but when it starts to go bad it’s really hard to get it turned. Shooting the ball is the same way. He came out in the second half and they weren’t close. He didn’t just miss them, they weren’t close. And we took him out and sat him down a little bit. And to his credit, he came back in and made shots. That’s not an easy thing to do.”
On the possibility of playing Minnesota on Sunday –
“I like them. They’re athletic. (Rodney) Williams is a really, really good athlete. Tubby’s just got a bunch of guys and they always guard and they don’t beat themselves. He’s got a good team.”
West Virginia Guard Casey Mitchell
On how he adjusted his shooting technique after a slow start –
“I watched some film and I wasn’t following through. I’d just shoot it and put my hand down or shoot it and yank my arm back. So I just left it up there a couple times to see what it’d do and it went in.”
On his game-winning shot –
“They switched the D the last couple of seconds and my eyes lit up. I knew I’d get a wide-open shot. The player up top went for the steal and left me wide open and I just took my time, took a deep breath and let it go.”
