Feb. 3, 2007
Georgia at Vanderbilt
Memorial Gymnasium
February 3, 2007
Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings
“It was really about what we expected, a very, very hard fought game between two very good basketball teams. It was a game that we both desperately wanted to win. We made plays and I thought we were really good on the defensive end. We got in a little foul trouble in the second half, but we were still very good in defensively. They are a very difficult team to guard, with a big guy inside that can score and those guards that shoot it so well. I thought we defended the three extremely well. There late, I thought we did a really good job of executing down the stretch.”
“When you play Georgia, it’s going to be hard fought because they guard you hard, they pushed it hard and they rebound hard. Dennis does a good job with them And they really made you play. For us to only have eight turnovers against their pressure is a really good thing.”
“This was a really big game for us. We wanted this one and I’m really happy for our players.”
“We can win in a variety of ways. We can win if the score gets high and we can win if the score gets low. I know we are going to compete. They scored 85 against us on us down there. The thing I take out of this game is how much progress we’ve made defensively. They got us a little in the second half, but they couldn’t find a good shot in the first half.
Second half play of senior forward Dan Cage:
“They were really getting after him and he was rushing a little bit, and he had been bothered by a sore back, but he was lights out in the second half. He was the difference in the game for us in the second half after Derrick played so well in the first half.”
“We are going to try to get better on Monday than we were today. We’re not worried about the race. Our guys are just trying to get better each day. With what Florida is doing, maybe we’re in the race.”
Senior guard Dan Cage
“It’s a rule of thumb with shooters, you want to get the first couple to go down. I wasn’t getting my feet set and I didn’t have any rhythm. Quite frankly, I might as well had a Georgia Bulldog uniform on because I was killing us. Then I hit a couple free throws and some shoots went down there and it helped us win.”
“The back wasn’t what was causing me to play well. It was my brain. Luckily, my teammates stuck with me and we were able to pull this one out.”
“Good teams find ways to win. There are days when you aren’t shooting the ball well and you have to find ways to win. We’d like to think that we can earn a reputation that when it does get ugly, we can fight through it and come out with a win. Tonight, we did that. I’m just glad we have guys on this team that are willing to get dirty, roll up their sleeves and get it done.
Senior guard/forward Derrick Byars
“(The win) was huge. We’ve been talking about the importance of this game all week. We were tied with them in the standings, so it separates us from them a little bit.”
“We are going to keep pushing and try to get as many wins as we can. We can’t worry about what other teams do. We have to worry about what Vanderbilt can do and keep winning.”
“The primary reason we lost the last time in Athens is that we didn’t guard. We gave it to them tonight as far as just locking up. I don’t think there was any stretch of the game that we didn’t lock down on defense.”
Georgia Coach Dennis Felton
“I was very proud of the players tonight. We fought really hard, played really hard. They (Vanderbilt) play really well as a team. They shoot so well from so many different positions that it creates a lot of problems defensively.”
“In the second half we had to improvise defensively and we went with four guards. It helped us out a lot. We needed to improvise offensively as well, and scored and played a lot better in the second half.”
“A couple key turnovers and big threes that Vanderbilt hit in the second half was the difference. Cage in particular really played like a senior tonight. He’s an exceptional shooter, really a machine shooting the ball. He hit four in the second half and I’m sure that at least three were not of the easy variety and were heavily contested.”
“Vanderbilt made some incredible shots. In the second half we defended much harder, played much harder, and were on the road against a very tough, very hot Vanderbilt team and gave ourselves a chance to win. They had just enough tonight to hold us off.”
Georgia Forward Takais Brown
On Georgia’s second straight road loss:
“This is just life in the SEC. We’re real hungry now. We wanted to win tonight and didn’t get it, now we have a bigger appetite than ever.”
On the Georgia’s 29 percent 3-point shooting:
“You always have to tell good shooters to keep shooting, no matter what, and we have a lot of great shooters. Even if you have an off night all you can do is keep shooting and try to get there.”
On Georgia’s next game against No. 1 Florida:
“As far as we’re concerned the odds have been against us since November. This one will be just like all the rest.”
On the one possession game with 15 seconds remaining:
“We’ve been in this position a couple of times and we’ve come back and won. We never felt like the game was over until the horn sounded. We should have gotten some rebounds and executed better.”
