Postgame Quotes: Texas A&M 67, Vols 61

Jan. 24, 2015

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(Opening Statement)
"Let me start by saying that's a good basketball team. I said before the game they reminded me a lot of Alabama. They're big guards and wings, which again caused us trouble when we were on the offensive end. For whatever reason, the first six to eight minutes of the game we didn't have the energy level I would've expected us to have. They had a great energy level. We get out-rebounded by seven on our home floor. We shoot 52 balls and 29 of them are from three. I know I'm repeating myself but to go back to the Alabama game, it's pretty much what we did then. We settled for too many jump shots. Our will and our mentality to drive the ball wasn't good enough like it has been in most cases the last few games. It wasn't the case tonight. Give Texas A&M a lot of credit for the way they defended. That's a tough, gritty group. They start three juniors and two seniors or vice versa. They're an experienced, strong, physical team."

(On Texas A&M's defensive philosophy)
"I think it was a two-three. They were just in a tandem like we are to start. They played some two-three, played some man, probably about two-thirds or three-quarters of the game they run their two-three. A big emphasis always is that we've got to get the ball to the mid-post against the zone. We got it there a couple of times to start the half and got a shot blocked on the weak side when we played with Armani. Armani missed that little short one. You know, about a four-footer. Then we went to the mid-post again and tilted out the weak side to Derek. He had a layup and kind of bobbled the ball. So we had six points right there within four feet of the rim and came up with none. That was critical. We kind of had those mishaps. I don't think we stayed as aggressive as we needed to be getting the ball there and or driving the ball there until about the last six minutes we finally did."

(On Tennessee's defense)
"Like I said to start their energy level wasn't what it was. Give Caruso a lot of credit in our press. He's good with the ball. He keeps it in the middle of the floor and makes it tough to get it to a sideline where we can get into our rotations and trap. We didn't score a whole bunch the first half. We didn't get in our press a whole bunch. The second half I thought we were able to play a little faster because we scored particularly the last six or eight minutes. Caruso is good, that was a concern of ours going in. It's hard to traffic him. When you do, he's strong with the ball and makes the right decisions. We just could never really speed him up or create turnovers in the full court."

(On the differences between the first and second half)
"I think the biggest thing I can say is that we missed those three little chippys right there around the rim. You could see our guys kind of drop their heads and then we didn't get back in transition and we missed a couple of those. They had back-to-back transition layups when I called the time out. Our team doesn't usually give up easy transition baskets. It just kind of avalanched on us but we always tell our team, "You can't let your offense dictate your defense." I thought we did that the first five or six minutes of the half."

(On Tennessee's size)
"When you win, I don't make excuses that our size wasn't good enough. When you lose, you don't want to start saying, "Well size bothered us." But in reality some nights it's going to bother us. When you make three's or you get to the foul line a lot, sometimes it compensates for the lack of size and physicality we have. We're not going to start making excuses when you can go beat a physical South Carolina team. Now you've got to come home and be just as physical against a good Texas A&M team, and we weren't, we just weren't. Give Texas A&M credit because they were very physical." 

(On lack of energy stemming from complacency of the last few road wins)
"I think so. I have said a lot of times that our team is mature for the inexperience and youthfulness that we have, but I don't think we played like a mature team today. That falls on my shoulders. I don't like to use that word, complacency, but we came out at the beginning of the game exactly like that. We will have to learn from the film room and hopefully get our mentality bucket where we are on edge every single game. With our margin of error, our lack of depth and some of the deficiencies we have if we are not on razor's edge and playing with attention to detail every night we can't win no matter who we play."

(On today's attacking zone)
"It is just a growing process. That is the thing with young teams when you look around the country. Some nights they are good and some nights they are bad. Some night young players look like a million bucks and some nights they look like a high school guy again. That was our team at least tonight. We had some young guys revert back. We had some guys play these roles that they are in now that, for lack of a better word, seemed complacent. We just can't be that way and win with our team. We have to be on edge."

(On Kevin Punter's late layup attempt)
"I didn't see a goaltend. I thought he had a good look. He was a little bit off balance. Obviously that bucket would have cut it to three (points) with about a minute to go. It just didn't go in and hung on the rim. He was playing the open floor. I thought about calling timeout when we first got it. He had the opportunity to get all the way to the rim so I didn't. He made some big plays and tough shots. That one just didn't happen to go down."

(On Josh Richardson being under his season average play the last few games due to the amount of minutes we is playing)
"We gave them Wednesday off and Thursday we did very, very little on the floor but walk through. Yesterday we went about an hour and ten minutes. They should have been really fresh. I just think the deeper you get into league play. The more, for lack of a better term, your works are exposed. Coaches take away your strengths. They try to make you play to your weaknesses or deficiencies that you have. Just like how we try to do. I think they (other teams) are playing Josh different ways and keep him off balanced. I thought we had a couple of opportunities once he got all the way to the rim but just missed it. Another time we had a panic situation on the open floor and he threw it away trying to get it to Robert (Hubbs III). Those things happen. I believe in Josh. I think he will bounce back next game."

(On Devon Baulkman)
"The biggest thing with Devon is that he gets fatigue really quick. He has to come out a couple times. One time in a huge play he didn't jump switch the ball screen and they (Texas A&M) jumped up and made a three or a deep two. We took him out for that. Part of it was Kevin (Punter) was playing really well. Robert (Hubbs III) made a couple shots in the second half. So we just went with that rotation."

Tennessee guard Kevin Punter

(On difficulty to score vs. Texas A&M)
"Credit to their team. Their guys handled our press pretty well. They executed. That's pretty much about it."

(On Texas A&M's offensive patience)
"Yeah, they did. They had us shifting. Like I said, credit to them. They had us shifting a lot. A few times, running inside on man and made shots."

(On Texas A&M's zone)
"Yeah, it did bother us, but I felt like we handled it the way we should. I felt like we could have driven it more. We settled a little bit too much. We just needed to attack more."

Tennessee guard Josh Richardson

(On difficulty of getting open shots as season progresses)
"Kind of. If multiple guys start coming at me, I am going to keep finding my teammates."

(On Kevin Punter)
"He did a good job of stepping up and knocking down shots. He was getting a lot of looks, and he was knocking it down."

(On loss being a reality check to young roster)
"Yeah, maybe. We have so many guys that have not played on this level, so maybe some guys were starting to feel themselves too much or get a little happy. We lost it, so now we have to come in tomorrow ready to work."

Tennessee guard Robert Hubbs III

(On settling for jump shots instead of attacking the basket and why that was the case)
"Yeah I think so. It wasn't a good start from the beginning. But we know what we have to do now and we have to get back to work tomorrow."

(On if he felt the team was a little complacent from the beginning)
"I think so, we wasn't attacking the man or the zone defensive and we settled for jump shots."

(On what contributed to being complacent)
"Just playing laid back and being aggressive and not rebounding the ball, not knowing our task."

(On if Coach Tyndall had the same edge with the team this week)
"Yes, he's always hard on us. He's going to do that each and every day."

(On what goes through his mind when he sees Texas A & M outscored them)
"I mean we just have to be better. We have to take that away from them be on our keys and box out and rebound and do all that simple stuff to win the game."

(On similarities between this game and the Alabama game)
"Just being a little complacent."

(On if it was getting lulled into zone of their size made the biggest difference at the end of the day)
"We didn't have a lot of guys, including myself, driving the ball enough and making team work better when they collapse on us so we just have to get back at it tomorrow and get better."

(On if it's frustrating to play well on the road and not at home in certain games)
"It's frustrating but I think we're going to get better."

(On why have they been so successful on the road)
"We just play together when are on the road. We know it's gonna be tough each and every night when we go on the road so we just have to play together."

(On if they played together today)
"I don't think so, but we are gonna be better. But it's coming along, we're gonna get better at it."

(On what they have to do to play better together)
"I don't know."

(On if it is frustrating to revert back to settling for shots)
"Yeah, I mean when teams play like that, like A & M did, I mean we have to drive the ball to get easy buckets but we didn't do that tonight."

Texas A&M head coach Billy Kennedy

(Opening statement)
"I'm proud of our guys. They came in here with a lot of confidence and executed the game plan against a very good Tennessee team. I thought we were able to hurt them a little bit inside in the first half and in the second half to move the ball to have 17 assists was important for us. I thought having only nine turnovers was important to us too."

(On the difference in the team this season)
"Maturity. Building a program. We pretty much had to start from scratch after our first year and we have guys buying in, guys that have been in the program and the new guys have adapted very well."

(On Tennessee's second-half run)
"I know Donnie's teams defensively can ratchet it up and get back with their press. I knew they would make a run at us. Fortunately, we had enough poise and made some big three-footers to finish the game off."

(On previous struggles against zone defense)
"That was the best [this year]. Our experience against Baylor, our experience against Alabama prepared us for this. The environment at Kansas State prepared us for this. I thought we did a good job of making the extra pass and being unselfish and sharing the ball."

Junior forward Jalen Jones

(On the 7-0 run to start the second half)
"We knew in the second half we had to come out and have more energy. Playing at home, they feed off their fans and they like to press and get after it. We knew we just had to take it to a different notch if we wanted to win this game. I think we had a couple of stretches where they made shots but we came back and made shots too. That really helped us tonight."

(On the difference in the team this season)
"We're locking in every day in practice. We know that we have to win on the road in order to be successful in the conference and it starts with practice. We go very hard in practice and then we come into the game prepared, ready to go win the game."

University of Tennessee Athletics

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