Oregon State - UCLA Post Game Quotes
January 02, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 2, 2009
OREGON STATE HEAD COACH Craig Robinson
On the game:
"It goes without saying because we did such an opposite job in the second half than in the first half. That was what I expected in the first half. These guys have to understand the learning process. It's a curve. It's not a straight line and you are going to have some setbacks. We were able to have that second half that gave us some confidence and showed we can play with the best team in the league.""
On the mistakes:
"When you have 20 turnovers and give up 12 offensive rebounds, there is an area of opportunity to get better right there. I told the guys I will take some of the blame, but we certainly cannot give up that many offensive rebounds and turn the ball over."
On the OSU defense:
"Our goal is to get the other team to take harder shots. A couple of those shots were earned, but a couple of them were wide open, which were missed assignments. When you look at how these guys put up points, when we were holding them to 32 points and 37 points in a half, it is a small moral victory. But, we are trying to win games, not moral games."
OREGON STATE SOPHOMORE Calvin Haynes
On what set the tone tonight:
"Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. That was the big thing. I'm not saying they didn't jump on us, but it was a lot of what we did not do. We didn't execute our offense. We didn't rebound. We didn't box out. We had a lot of missed assignments tonight. That hurt us."
OREGON STATE SENIOR Rickey Claitt
On the encouragements of an even second half:
"We can take that everybody in this conference is beatable. If we come out and execute our game-plan and play within ourselves and not go out of the plan we can beat anybody in this league. We have to just not turn the ball over and play how we played in the second half every half."
When it comes down to it, giving up layups and giving wide open threes, we can't let that happen. We should have come out and tried to make a statement on defense, then that transfers over to the offense. That's what we did in the second half."
UCLA HEAD COACH BEN HOWLAND
Opening statement:
"I think Craig is doing a great job with his team, and they are going to beat people this year. We're just glad it wasn't us tonight. In the first half our defensive intensity forced 11 turnovers. I thought we really controlled the game. Holiday's defense is getting better and better and he is taking their best player and is getting better at that. They looked really good for the Pac-10 opener."
On Oregon State in the second half:
"We didn't do a good job to start the second half. In fact, we lost a little something there in the first five minutes. Obviously, they came out disappointed being down at half time, so you knew they were going to have a surge coming out. You want to be able to be comfortable when you build a lead like that, but give credit to them because they came out and didn't quit."
