Jan. 7, 2007

Recap | Final Stats | Notes

South Carolina vs. Kansas Coach and Player Quotes, January 7, 2006

South Carolina Head Coach Dave Odom

“We certainly lost to an excellent basketball team. They have good talent, are expertly coached and have good chemistry. They don’t panic. It’s what you expect of a national caliber team. They can compete with anybody. They have excellent guard play.”

“Looking at the game as a whole, I was not pleased with our execution. We were going to take advantage of their big guys, but we backed off our execution. There were errant passes, missed catches, and you pay for that against a team like Kansas.”

“When we were behind in the first half, I asked the team to raise the level of play. We did, we hit some shots, and the next thing you know we are down 32-28 at halftime. I felt good at that point.”

“We fatigued pretty bad. I’m not surprised Tre Kelly did, since he hadn’t practiced all week. I am surprised that some of the other guys did.”

“On free throws: “I don’t think we completed two in a row in the second half. If you go 8-19, you’re not going to win at this level. When you don’t hit them, you open the door for a team like Kansas. They know how to hurt you.”

“It was a disappointing loss. I feel we can play better than we did. We have got to get better tomorrow and Tuesday so we can be ready Wednesday night.”

“Their speed on defense was surprising to our perimeter players. It was more effective than their speed on offense. They are an excellent ball-hawking team. It’s one of those things that is hard to emulate in practice.”

On Tre: “The good Lord is working on him. It’s amazing. He took some hard shots. He was hesitant to penetrate. He got so fatigued that it affected his defense. But it was a good workout for him. We’ve got to be careful about how we use him in practice.”

South Carolina Players

Brandon Wallace:

On the game:
“Kansas is a very good team and a very deep team which helped them a lot. “Our missing free throws didn’t help us either.”

On this game as a learning experience:
“I didn’t get a chance to really watch what was going on. Playing so many minutes makes that a little difficult. I’m sure after we watch the tape, we will learn a lot.”

On SEC play:
“Playing Kansas before the SEC opener really showed us where we stand coming into conference play. It was high level basketball being played today. We’re going to have to step out game up coming into this week when we play Georgia and Florida.”

Tre Kelley:

On the Kansas offense:
“Kansas has a pretty good defense, but they had a really strong offense.”

On his knee injury:
“There wasn’t any pain at all and I wasn’t slowed down by my knee. There hasn’t been any swelling since the injury. My speed wasn’t affected though.”

On not playing for a week:
“I didn’t play for a week and it caught up with me towards the end. “I had to dig deep to help my team, but came up short in the end.”

Kansas Head Coach Bill Self

“I thought we played pretty well. We didn’t rebound the ball in the first half very well. The second half we did. We played pretty well considering we’ve only been away from home a couple of times this year. It was a true road game.”

“We were forced into making some shots. They’ve got pretty good shooters. They missed some difficult shots, which really helped us down the stretch.”

“I thought our defense in the first 15 minutes was excellent. Not that our offense was great, but we created havoc on defense. Obviously, we played aggressively.”

On top ten teams losing this week:
“Coaches will do anything to try to get guys’ attention, but I never said anything about that.”