Nov. 3, 2011

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Darrin Horn
Opening Statement…
I thought going into this game this team would be a work in progress and have a lot to work on and I saw some positives and a lot of things to get better at. Really pleased of the total team effort, everyone was in double figures (minutes). I thought everyone contributed. I thought Kentucky Wesleyan played really hard tonight especially down the stretch. We definitely have to take care of the ball better. We have to look at the positives too though. We shot the ball extremely well.

On Anthony Gill’s performance…
My impressions are he has done what he always does since the first time I saw him play. He just goes out and plays. He’s got numbers; he is a producer, that’s what he does. Down the stretch, I think I saw him miss more times than I have seen him miss the last two and a half years I have seen him play, but that will go away and he will be a great player for us in the future.

On establishing presence inside…
I think we actually established ourselves inside in terms of getting the ball inside. On the very first play of the game, we got the ball to Damontre (Harris). I thought he made a really strong, aggressive move, it just didn’t go in. I think we established good inside things in terms of getting the ball in there and getting the ball in the paint. Some of those came in transition, which was a positive.

On team’s confidence…
I think our guys are confident in each other. And that’s why you see 14 assists on 23 buckets the first time out. Pretty good numbers. Pretty good ratio on that. So I think those little things are positives for us right now.

South Carolina Player Quotes
Freshman Forward Anthony Gill
On his first points of the season…
When I got the ball I was kind of nervous at first. Your first college basket is definitely very exciting. I looked out (to the perimeter) first and saw that they were covered so I went up and I was happy about it.

On playing in his first game…
When I first got out there the first two minutes were definitely rough. All of the adrenaline pumping running up and down the court is different than practice. In practice you can go up and down all day, but when you get into a real situation you get real tired, real fast. But, my teammates pushed me through it and I definitely had a good time out there. I saw what I needed to work on. I need to work on a lot of stuff. We all need to work on a lot of stuff as a team.

Freshman Guard Damien Leonard
On his shooting from the perimeter…
I shot whenever I was open. It didn’t always go in but I felt like I was shooting well.

On starting in his first college game…
You could tell that all of the hard work in the summer paid off. In practice playing against my teammates, working hard. I finally got to play against someone else and tried to take advantage of it.

Sophomore Forward RJ Slawson
On his work over the off season paying off…
I think I played well. My teammates set me up in good positions for me to help them out and score and rebound. My teammates really helped me improve.

On getting stronger in the off season…
I was just lifting weights and drinking protein shakes. All of us really pushed each other to get stronger and to get bigger.

Kentucky Wesleyan Head Coach Todd Lee
Overall impressions of the game…
I thought the first half and going into the second we were winning, or at least had a chance of winning this game. They hung in there and did a good job of coming back and we just had a bad five-six minute stretch at the end of the first, start of the second half.

On South Carolina’s defense…
They can put a lineup out there very long and their zone bothered us a little bit. They have some shot blockers at the back end of it and that’s what bothered us. That length is good obviously and it bothered us.

On first time out for both teams this season…
Both of us are in the same spot as far as what we have in pretty basic things offensively, there’s not a lot. They were running the same thing over and over and neither one of us were very advanced offensively, but I thought our guys competed, I thought their guys competed. They’ve got a young group, they’ll just keep getting better and our guys will get better also.