Dec. 16, 2009

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Darrin Horn
Opening Statement…
I think it was obvious tonight that this was a game of two different halves. I am a little surprised about the margin, but I am not surprised about how the halves went. We talked to our team leading into this game that [Richmond] is a team that you have to play for 40 minutes. They are good at what they do and we knew that we were going to have to play for 40 minutes. Obviously this is a big win. That is a very good basketball team that I think is going to be a tournament team because they are so hard to play against. I think what I am most proud of is that our guys just kept playing, and they kept fighting. In the second half, we really set the tone with some offensive rebounds and being aggressive defensively. It was good to see us win one where we grind it out, and things aren’t going our way, but we just kept playing. We made shots in the second half, and there have been some stretches where we have not done that in some games. We are going to keep doing what we do and keep taking the good ones. Really good win for our team, and I am really excited for our guys.

On halftime adjustments…
Just went in [at halftime] and told them that we have to keep playing and do what we set out to do for 40 minutes. We are down by eight in a game where we made no shots, and [Richmond] got some hustle plays. We have to eliminate their hustle plays, and shots are going to fall for us, and we have to keep playing. We didn’t take the paint off the walls, we just told them what we needed to keep doing in the second half.

On Johndre Jefferson’s play…
Johndre was terrific tonight. He was bordering on the perfect game. He was outstanding. I think he brought us a lot off the bench on both ends of the floor. I am repetitive with what I say, but if you go down our stat sheet and just look at how the game went, every guy on the team did what they could do tonight. When we do that, even with two guys out, we think we can play with anyone. We did that tonight, and there is no question that Johndre was a huge part of that.