Oregon State - Oregon Post Game Quotes
January 31, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 31, 2009
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
OREGON STATE HEAD COACH Craig Robinson
On his first Civil War ...
"All I heard since April when I got here was, coach you don't have to win any games just win the Civil War. I was feeling the pressure this week. I'm just so happy. We have a locker room of guys who have never won a Civil War so this was a first for them and a first for me. The best number on the stat sheet is the attendance, 10,129. We had a bunch of folks here who have never been here and have now seen us live."
On closing out the game ...
"I think that is a tribute to our guys' maturity level and their faith in what we do. They chipped away and didn't break out of their offense and kept running what we run. It was a well fought game and I didn't think we had it until the very end."
On defensive adjustments on Tajuan Porter in the second half ...
"We had to make an adjustment. We said in our scouting report that if they don't make threes they can't beat us. We made sure we knew where he [Tajuan Porter] was and then they started moving him around, it made it harder for us to find him."
OREGON STATE GUARD Calvin Haynes
On the significance of this win:
"It's very big. For me and Omari this is our first Civil War win. It feels great to get the monkey off our back."
On the difference of Oregon in the second half:
"Tajuan Porter didn't touch the ball much. He didn't get his shots off and only had three points (in the second half). He hit his first shot around the four minute mark. I think that was the big difference between us and them in the second half. Other than that, we had a lot of energy in the second half and we contested a lot of shots."
On Omari's three before halftime:
"It gave us a big charge. Just to see Omari play well for us was a big charge. Even though we were down and Roeland (Schaftenaar) and I weren't having the best half, he (Omari) picked it up. It was big, he was big today."
OREGON STATE FORWARD Omari Johnson
On the Beavers second half defense on Tajuan Porter:
"We had someone shade to his side so he wouldn't just be able to shoot off the catch. We didn't want to double away from him or leave him open."
On Coach Robinsons words at halftime:
"He was calm, he just gave us a few words and said if we didn't pick it up in the second half we were going to lose this game. We didn't want to lose this Civil War in front of the packed house we had. It was the first one in a while so we didn't want to disappoint our fans."
On the Oregon State fans:
"We loved it, we were so happy when we heard it was sold out. We were jumping around in the locker room. We never thought it would happen to us; but it did, and we didn't want to disappoint them."
OREGON HEAD COACH ERNIE KENT
On the game tonight ...
"I thought we had an excellent game plan. We attacked them just like we wanted to attack them on offense. We had them off balance defensively with a power press. The difference in the game was all the missed layups. That's been the tale of this team all season long. In the second half I thought we played well but here was that stretch where we had four turnovers where we got away from our game plan."
On their defense in the game ...
"We are a pressing team and I've told people that. We saw some things where we felt like we could trap them. We hurt them three or four times but we came down and missed some tough shots.
