Jan. 13, 2010

Recap | Box Score | Notes

South Carolina Head Coach Darrin Horn
Opening Statement
I don’t know who y’all have as player of the game but I have our crowd. I thought they were tremendous in the second half run, especially our students. We can’t stress enough the importance of having that crowd at home. Games are going to be hard to win. This league is tough and protecting our home court is important.

On coming back in the second half
We’re really proud of our guys with the effort and fight they showed. That’s what we want, and what we can control is how hard they play. The biggest key to the second half is we made some shots. At the end of the day that’s what you have to do in this game. That’s our strength and it helps make our defense go.

On taking away quick passes
It wasn’t the diagonal pass that hurt us, it was that we didn’t have any pressure on the first one. Storm Warren had three dunks in the first half because our big guy didn’t stay back. In the second half we stayed back and forced some pull-up jump shots. You can’t take away everything and be great at everything. In the second half I thought our bigs did a good job. Johndre Jefferson was huge for us tonight.

On Devan Downey
Nothing he does surprises us. Part of what keyed that was a play we ran out of a timeout. I don’t know if we ran it all year but that’s what he can do. That’s what makes special players special is they can do what they want to do, and he did that tonight.

On free throw shooting
I’m not worried about free throw shooting. I’m worried about how hard we play and how our kids fought and continued to battle. Like I said, there may be something we don’t do well but we have to give ourselves a chance to win by flying around competing.

On his halftime speech
We told them at halftime we thought we were in pretty good shape. We played well defensively. We had three key guys in foul trouble (in the first half) so I felt like we were in OK shape (when we could play them in the second half). The simple thing is we made some shots early. It’s gets our guys going.

On Sam Muldrow
He had foul trouble so he didn’t get to do as much as we’d like but in the second half when we started to play better I thought his presence at the back of the press was really important for us. He’s one guy we need out there as much as he can because of what he brings.

On Ramon Galloway
One of the things as a coach you look for, Ramon Galloway I thought was terrific tonight. I had no idea he didn’t score. That’s not something he could have done a week ago. His defensive presence was (outstanding).

LSU Head Coach Trent Johnson
Opening Statement
For 30 minutes we played pretty well. I thought we did a good job of handling their pressure. The last 10 minutes the little guy did what he does best. He made some things happen defensively. He made tough shots. Little guy plays a big game. We’re talking about (Devan) Downey of course. We did a real good job of breaking the pressure but for whatever reason there was a stretch there where we had bad passes in a row. Right now we have to find a way to get over the hump.

On what has gone wrong in the last 10 minutes of games
The last 10 minutes, it’s been our Achilles heel. Obviously South Carolina wants to speed you up. I can recall three situations when we got the ball with a 3-on-1 like we did in the first half but we didn’t execute. I can recall three situations where Chris Bass tries to go 90 miles an hour. In a situation like that with our basketball team, with our margin of error we don’t have the capability to (do that). We’re getting better.

On the ability to get the ball inside the post
This is three games in a row now where we’ve gotten some type of pressure. Those two teams (Alabama and McNeese State) don’t come at you like South Carolina. It was something going into the year we work on but you can’t simulate the kind of quickness certain teams have. I wasn’t surprised. I don’t think the payers were.