University of Tennessee Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Vols 59, Mizzou 51
January 17, 2015 | Men's Basketball
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TENNESSEE HEAD COACH Donnie Tyndall
Opening Statement…
“Let me start by saying I think Kim Anderson is doing as good of a job as anyone in our league. This team has kept getting better and better; I watch every game they’ve played. From early in the year to now this team has made a ton of progress and they’re playing hard. They competed for 40 minutes just the same as us. It wasn’t the prettiest game but we were able to hold them to 36% and out-rebound a pretty long, athletic team by 4. We took care of the ball much better in the second half and gave ourselves an opportunity to win. That was a typical hard-fought league game.”
On how they adapt to not having a “big team"…
“Well it is. A lot of times it takes away a big guy’s presence in the paint because the opportunities to catch are limited. We also do a pretty good job, at times, of doubling the posts when they do catch. It’s helpful but you’re going to sacrifice some things like giving up the three-point line. To Mizzou’s credit they knocked 8 in and for a while there it didn’t seem like they were going to miss.”
JUNIOR GUARD Kevin Punter
On his mindset coming into the game… “I approached it just like any other game. We just have to come in and stay focused and do what we do. Credit to Mizzou, too: those guys came out and had some pretty good shots. We just had to stay poised.”
On what he was thinking when Mizzou went up 46-43…
“I just had to chip away at [the point difference]. I believe I tied the game up but for us but the most important part for us as a team after that was playing defense."
MIZZOU HEAD COACH Kim Anderson
Opening Statement…
“A game I think that we had the opportunity to win, we fought back and had struggled early and couldn’t make shots. We kept in the game and I thought we made a nice run right before the half. Second half we get the game tied up and then we make some mistakes at the end. We turn it over and make some defensive mistakes and they took advantage of it and won the game. I am not sure what positive I would take out of this, other than our effort was really good coming off of Kentucky. That was a tough deal to go down there and play and get beat like we did. We did bounce back and I thought we were a little tentative early but we just kept plugging away. This is a disappointing loss to be honest with you.”
On Tennessee’s zone forcing a bad shooting night in the field and at the free throw line…
“Yes, the zone is different, obviously. I thought we had great look, early especially. I thought we missed some shots early and I didn’t think that the zone was hurting us. The zone was effective the whole game, because it keeps the possessions down and stuff. I thought we really got some good shots and we just didn’t make them. I don’t know if it was the zone or us.”
On the margin for error for this Mizzou team…
“Small. It is small. I said this a few weeks ago that this team needs something good to happen and we beat LSU and now we are kind of in a rut again. We played pretty well against Auburn, played horrible against Kentucky and obviously this game today was not pretty but it was competitive and we just weren’t able to get over the hump. I think the margin of error for this team is not very big. The good thing is that we have guys back and we kind of have full roster again. So, maybe we can use some of the guys that haven’t been playing to help us out.”
FRESHMAN GUARD Namon Wright
On three straight possessions with turnovers at the end of the game…
“I don’t know exactly what happened but we weren’t executing down the stretch and that is why we had those bad turnovers.”
On Tennessee’s zone affecting Mizzou long-range jumpers…
“We didn’t really have a good shooting night. So, we weren’t really hitting any shots early. I think if we would have hit some shots, it would have loosened the zone up.”
On this loss’s feeling compared to the feeling after the Kentucky loss…
“We prepare to win every game, so every loss hurts. Every loss pretty much hurts the same. We are going to try and win as many games as possible.”
