Dec. 6, 2014

Recap | Final Stats | USATSI Gallery

South Carolina Head Coach Frank Martin
Opening Statement
I’m really happy that we won but just proud of our guys. I’ve got a lot of respect for [Oklahoma State head coach] Travis [Ford] and his team. We have had, he’ll tell you, some unbelievable games with each other over the years. Last year when we went over there, we weren’t ready for that kind of game. We got beat up pretty bad and its good to see those young kids of ours stay the course and continue to work and be excited about what we’re trying to do. That’s what’s crazy about sports, if we were playing bad, we would probably have a game on Monday. Now we actually are playing half way decent and we don’t have a game for two weeks.

On importance of early defense
We have been defending well. Even the games we have lost, our defense has not been the problem. I’ve been real happy with our defense. What we haven’t done is we haven’t come up with those, you have a great possession defensively and that ball kind of just falls out there or comes off the rim and it’s a competitive ball, and we haven’t been coming up with those. I thought our guards were phenomenal in coming up with those basketballs and coming up with defensive rebounds and then taking off and just attacking in the open court. I thought our guards were real good. Our bigs didn’t play their cleanest game…the one thing they did do and continue to do is they’re protecting the rim for us defensively. We’ve got to make sure we maintain our focus with what we’re doing defensively and just have patience as we continue to grow offensively.

South Carolina Sophomore Guard Sindarius Thornwell
On importance of early defense
That was just big for us. All week, playing good defense, making sure they don’t get to run their sets and their continuity and just to get into their passing lanes and make it hard for them and extend them out and that’s what we did today, extended them and made it hard for them to feed the post and come off screens.

South Carolina Sophomore Guard Duane Notice
On importance of early defense
We had a great couple weeks of practice in terms of defense and we feel like our strength is defense right now so we just have to capitalize and make the other team use the majority of the shot clock and run their offense as far out as possible.

Oklahoma State Head Coach Travis Ford
Opening Statement
They just played tremendous. The tone was set very early. They just out-played us. I thought everybody on [Coach Martin’s] his team played pretty well. There weren’t many positives on our side but congratulations to them they played really good.

Obviously, we didn’t shoot the ball well but they had a lot to do with that. You can say, “Oh we had an off night”, no, they played good defense. Give them credit. It kind of snowballed for us a little bit and for them. That’s what happens in sports. Period. I don’t care if it is basketball, football, baseball whatever it is. You get the momentum going at home and their team is ready. You could tell they were really focused on winning. I thought that all their players played to a really high level. Everybody on his team did a good job playing to their strengths. We could just never really get anything going. Congrats to them. Give them the credit.