Head Coach Lon Kruger
Opening comment:
“I’m really happy for the guys. I thought they played great. It was one day of preparation for an Arkansas team, that is a unique preparation. I thought they were fantastic defensively, played with great awareness, contested a lot of shots for the most part. Arkansas is very tough to guard, very quick off the dribble, and again I thought the guys had good communication and good awareness defensively. They rebounded the ball well again. They handled the pressure pretty well, threw the ball down the floor, attacked pretty aggressively, made a lot of good plays for each other, and a lot of guys stepped up and made shots. It was a good combination of stuff.”
On containing Arkansas:
“After we opened a little bit shaky right off the bat, then we had a good flow going, a good run. I told the guys afterwards in the locker room that I thought, just on a couple of occasions, we lost focus through the 40 minutes. Hopefully we will try to improve on that. Again, that stretch at the end of the first half and maybe even then to start the second, we lost focus a bit, but overall, great job. Again, a lot of guys stepped up and made plays for each other.”
On Tyler Neal’s performance off the bench:
“That’s huge with any team. We’re not real deep in general. Cam (Clark) gets that second foul very early, Tyler goes in and it was great to see him aggressive, attacking. He can do that, he’ll keep doing that more and more. I thought Tyler was great defensively. I thought he really was the glue on the defensive end of helping, recovering, and awareness on the defensive end. Then Barry (Honore) came in and gave us some big minutes with Drew (Fitzgerald) in foul trouble. It’s nice to see different guys again, doing it at different times.”
On handling Arkansas’ pressure:
“For the most part, not bad. We got a little casual a couple of times. We turned it over. They can get on a big run with that press if they get it going and cranking it up pretty good. We avoided that, I thought, with back-to-back turnovers to make it a six-point swing. For the most part, I thought our guys did a terrific job with it.”
On OU’s shooting success:
“Shooting the ball well cures a lot of problems. They put a lot of time in. That’s the thing we keep reinforcing to our guys. It’s not an accident if you spend time, shoot before practice, shoot after practice. As you start making shots, of course you want to shoot more so it kind of reinforces itself. They’ve worked hard, they’re getting good results. When you get good results, you work even harder, so that’s kind of a good niche for us right now. These guys will keep making progress.
