Oregon State Post-Game Quotes
November 04, 2012 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 4, 2012
Oregon State 83, Lewis & Clark 58
Exhibition Game
November 4, 2012
Gill Coliseum
Corvallis, Ore.
Head coach Craig Robinson
Opening Comment...
"It sure is nice getting the season going. We really needed a game against someone other than ourselves. I thought tonight's game was a good test for us. Lewis & Clark has nothing to be ashamed of and I'm glad they came to play tonight. When we schedule these games, we try to make it hard on ourselves. We thought that playing a team with a lot of guards would test our man-to-man defense. They did a great job of driving to the basket and trying to get around our bigger guys. There is a lot of stuff to be happy about, but the stuff that I am a little disappointed with was our rebounding. I thought we let them get too many of the long, offensive rebounds early in the game. But after halftime we made the adjustment and thought we did a better job with it. That is one of our points of emphasis this season is to limit our opponent's offensive rebounds. Turnovers are another point of emphasis this season. We had four in the first half and four in the second, and we only had one player with more than one, which was really good to see. The other point of emphasis was our foul shots. We were 17-for-21 overall, which was a good start to our season. We just need to carry this over to our next games. We played a lot of our freshmen in the first half, which I do not normally do, but I am confident in this team and their abilities."
On the play of the four freshmen...
"They are earning our trust, and when I first put them in, they were not very trustworthy. I think that it was mostly nerves, but when they finally settled down they were fine. You have to remember when we get into the meat of the season, I doubt that there will be more than one or two of them in together at one time. Certainly if they defend the way they did today, then they will be able to get into games. We don't need a lot of freshmen help offensively as much as we do need them to give our guys a breather and keep points off the board. I have seen them work in practice and have witnessed their strengths defensively."
On bringing Devon Collier off the bench...
"The idea behind that is that a lot of people don't realize that your sixth man takes the most shots on the team. If it doesn't happen for other teams, it happens for mine. This is why last year Roberto (Nelson) was our sixth man. This year, since Roberto is in the starting line-up, we need to find someone to fill that sixth-man spot. We need to find someone who is a good defense and offense guy straight off the bench, and playing starter's minutes, but just not right at the beginning of the game. Devon was playing that role in practice, and we will see how it goes in the next few games."
On what the team needs to do to be better at rebounding...
"You just have to work on it. I hate rebounding drills simply because we seem to get a lot of guys hurt that way. But we are going to have to do some to reinforce how important that is. Having said that, when we look at the tape we will probably find that most of those rebounds came off of the long three-pointers. That is really the guards' responsibility. We have to get used to that. Lewis & Clark was a particularly small team and they took 24 three-point shots. We did a great job defensively in making them miss, but cannot afford to give them those second or third chances. We are going to focus on those long rebounds, but I am not going to press the panic button yet. They know how important rebounding is, and we will continue to work on it. We will also continue to spend a lot of time on our man-to-man defense."
On the play of Ahmad Starks...
"It is interesting. I thought Ahmad did not look for his shot as much today. He was more of a playmaker in this game. He only played 23 minutes and had four assists. He was really leading the team out there. He was calling almost all of the plays. I called the first three plays of the game and Ahmad took over from there. I think what you will see are numbers similar to this but over 30 to 32 minute games with him being more of the playmaker role to set his team up."
Junior guard Ahmad Starks
On what the Beavers need to work on before the season opener on Friday...
"We definitely need to work on the rebounding. At one point, they were up on us and we need to cut that out. Especially with a team like this, we need to dominate them on the boards. We also need to work on our defensive intensity because they beat us on the dribble too much."
On the impact of the freshmen this season...
"As the season goes on, it will take them a while to get adjusted to everything just like most freshmen, but as things go on they will be able to help us on both ends of the court with their energy, athleticism and their ability to score the ball in different ways."
On which freshman impressed him the most tonight...
"I would say either Jarmal Reid or Olaf Schaftenaar played the best tonight. Olaf hit a couple good three-point shots and Jarmal was playing well on defense and getting easy buckets and did a nice job."
Junior forward Devon Collier
On his new role coming off the bench...
"I take the change as a positive. Coming off the bench helps me provide the team more firepower and ability to score. I can also come in and help make the team more confident."
On providing energy off the bench...
"Coach always has a strategy. If the team plays well with me out, that's good. If they don't, I have the ability to come in, pick them up and keep us on point. I think me coming off the bench will be a good strategy for us."
On lessons from tonight's game...
"We just have to rebound and protect the ball a little better. They were getting second looks and we weren't playing defense well enough. In the second half, we played solid and limited their rebounding, which made us go up."
