Oregon State - Cal Post Game Quotes
February 21, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 21, 2009
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
OREGON STATE HEAD COACH Craig Robinson
On the contributions from the whole team:
"I have been preaching to our guys since I got here that to be a good team you have to have two go-to guys and a third guy who steps up each game. The real good teams, like Cal have three guys; UCLA, they have three guys; USC, Washington, they all have three guys. It's a numbers game. For us, it seems that when we do well there is a third guy who just emerges. It was Lathen (Wallace) today, Daniel Deane gave us something, and Omari (Johnson) gave us something. It's been really interesting to see how this team evolves."
On the potential for Cal to break the game open in the first half and early in the second:
"It always seems like someone is getting ready to break it open on us. It was a game that, because of the way the first half went, you felt like we could never get our arms around what they were doing. It was like a balloon and we would squeeze the sides, and then the little thing would pop out here, we would cover that one and another would pop out over there. But I know these guys and they thrive when they are behind, in a good way. We now have some really good empirical data about shutting down people on defense and running our offense and getting what we want."
OREGON STATE SOPHOMORE Calvin Haynes
On the comeback win:
"It felt good, but I want to say that it came down to execution. We got a lot of stops, and we stopped letting them outrebound us like they did in the beginning of the game. They didn't shoot a great percentage, but they shot a decent percentage because they were rebounding so well. We kind of put that to a stop (with the effort in the second half)."
On the offensive flow in the second half:
"We practice for situations like these. We practice for four minute games, we run down the shot clock. Coach says if the shot clock goes off he doesn't care, as long as we are moving, cutting, and moving the ball around. That's what we do, we grind it out."
OREGON STATE SOPHOMORE Lathen Wallace
On getting shots in the flow of the game:
"We just needed to run the offense and the game would come to us. We just played the game and it came out in our favor."
On getting a feel for the game:
"When I'm into it, I'm into it. It was a good game for me and the team."
CALIFORNIA HEAD COACH MIKE MONTGOMERY
On the game...
"They out preformed us. I thought we were ready to play. I thought the kids prepared themselves, they knew how important this game was. We were up 12, 14 points in the first half and they bounced back. I thought we were pretty much in control in the first half. In the second half, I thought they out-preformed us. We didn't shoot the ball very well and that's what we do. If we don't shoot the ball then we have problems. We went small to try and attack the zone; but, in fact, they went big and it hurt us. The zone hurt us. We weren't able to get good shots. When the ball doesn't go down we tend to get a little concerned. They started making shots. They shot 70 percent in the second half; we shot 27. That's the tale of the game. Calvin Haynes has hurt us both games. He just jumps up and shoots it. He can create his own shot and that really hurt us. It came down to they had to miss one and we had to make one and it just didn't happen."
On Calvin Haynes...
"He's a guy that if they need him they go to him. We had some matchup issues. They tried to post Jerome [Randle] a little bit. That was a bit of a match-up problem when they went big. When the clock got to 5, 6, 7, 8 seconds they would back cut us. We went to a zone and were in pretty good shape and they went to Calvin in the corner and he just jumped up and hit a three [pointer]. So it goes to 55 [points] and we miss and it's pretty much game, set and match.
On UCLA losing and a potential opportunity lost...
"We were in first place coming out of this if we won regardless, we knew that. It's just the way it was going to be, we were going to be in first place if we won. We were ready to play. It's a tough league, probably tougher than people want to give it credit for. Is it a lack of a great team at the top? I don't know. All I know is that games are tough to win. These games are going to come back to hurt us. Oregon State beat us twice. I think Oregon State's pretty good. [Robinson's] done a really good job with his team in making them confident and making sure they do what they can do. At the end of the day, they're going to be tough losses."
