Nov. 8, 2015

Recap | Final Stats

South Carolina Head Coach Frank Martin
Opening statement
Before I talk about the game tonight first I want to address the unfortunate situation last night with one of our on-campus police officers and the police officer from the city that passed away. Our prayers are with both of their families obviously. And we are very fortunate that we have great, great members of the police department that make this community so safe. I’ve lived in a lot of communities and they make this a very safe community for us to be able to raise our children and thoughts go out to both of them.

The game pretty much went how I expected. We played real hard, our guys have been great in practice, in regards to their enthusiasm, their energy, their defensive principles, things that we are usually not that good at this early in the year, we’re actually pretty good at this year. Where we’re at on the floor defensively, we attempted to take more charges on the floor tonight I think than we have in my previous three years combined and that says a lot about the kind of guys that are on our team. That’s a missing part that we’ve had on our defense. We had too many turnovers, freshmen were all too nervous. One of them was so nervous the first time he went down the floor he couldn’t breathe. But that’s part of the freshman situation, but now they got their feet wet and they’re over it. We could have shot 52 percent from the field today and not defended and everyone would have been happy and I would not have been in a good mood. But when you control the effort plays, you give your team a chance. The baskets will come. Big [Eric] Cobb, he’s going to make the layups, Chris Silva is not going to fumble balls, PJ’s [Dozier] not going to go 2-for-56 or whatever he was today. Those guys were just nervous. I think we had 69 rebounds. I’ve never been around a team that had 69 rebounds and I preach rebounds and I’ve never seen that before. I’m excited about our guys.

R-Freshman Guard TeMarcus Blanton
On how it felt to get back on the court after his injury…
Scariest moment of my life, as soon as I got out there I was shaking, couldn’t feel my hands but you know, to make an impact, it was great.

Senior Forward Laimonas Chatkevicius
On helping the freshmen during the game…
They’re really young and at times they forget small details, where to run, what to do, where to screen, when to flip the screen and stuff. I just tried to help them and remind them so that for the next time they would know what to do. That kind of stuff, just looking out for them.

Allen Head Coach Nelson Jones
Opening statement
For starters I would like to thank the University of South Carolina, Coach Frank Martin and his staff for extending this opportunity for us to gain some experience. This is a historic day for us because it is the first time our University has ever been able to compete at a level such as today. We are so thankful he is willing to open his arms and his facility to our University.

On his team’s 3-point strategy…
Our main focus today was on executing what we prepared as far as the scouting report, forcing them to score by shooting 3s, protecting the paint and rebounding the basketball, which we didn’t do great at, but [the South Carolina players] are so big. That was the focus of emphasis and getting back in transition, everything else just happened to fall into play. I am proud of the guys for playing confident, working hard and sticking to the script.

On how this game helped Allen for the regular season..
Oh my gosh, I am so excited because I think they shocked themselves today. I think they realized that they can stick to the script as they did. We have a good chance at beating anybody because we just played the best team in South Carolina.