Nov. 5, 2009

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Darrin Horn
Opening Statement…
First time out, and I think we looked like it was a first time out. I saw a lot of things that were encouraging both from individuals and from our team in terms of how we want to do things and how we want to play. And I saw an awful lot on what we need to work on, as I’m sure every coach does this time of year. Really a lot of positives that I think we can build on, and individually some really exciting things happened. I think Sam Muldrow played confident. Numbers aside, I thought he played like the guy that we need him to be in terms of just being aggressive, and being a guy that we can look to score offensively and be aggressive defensively. I thought our two freshmen [Lakeem Jackson and Ramon Galloway] that played a lot of minutes did a lot of positive things. And Johndre Jefferson did some good things in a short period of time. A lot of positives to take from tonight when we start looking at team stuff like statistics, field goal percentage and defense. I think the big thing is that it is our first time out, and we need to come back and figure out what we need to get better at and the challenge is that we have a short time. It is a unique situation this year where we play [our regular season opener] next Friday night, and once that starts, we have five games in nine days.

On the importance of an exhibition…
I think exhibition games are important because they are sort of like a dress rehearsal. You get out in the lights and guys have to play and dress the situation, especially for the new guys that have not been through it. We have some guys that have not played a lot as of late or have not been full go in practice, so it was good to get them out there and give them experience.

On South Carolina’s defense…
The numbers say good, but I am not sure if I feel that way, I need to see the film on that. I think we did some really good things. Our pressure was good at times, we were really good with our hands, and there were times that our rotations were really good, and sometimes it looked like we have not worked on it at all. We have a lot of work to do, but there are some positives about tonight.