OU Head Coach Lon Kruger
Opening statement:
“It was a good ball game where I thought Idaho State did a great job by coaching that zone and did a good job with that. They got us standing a little bit. It was a great opportunity to not only win a ball game, but to learn a lot. We’ll learn a lot from this one. The guys worked hard for a long time in preparation for this. And we’ll look back and get a chance to watch some film and see a lot good plays. The guys made a lot of good plays when we needed them. Different guys stepped up at different times and we’ll see some plays where we can do a lot better. That’s what you expect from a first game. And the combination of winning and the opportunity to learn is a good one, so we feel good about that.”
About coming back from the deficit:
“Guys battled right there at one point when we were down 10 or 11 in the first half and come back to a couple there before halftime. It’s a good sign. No question that you don’t like being down, but how you respond when you’re down is really important. Defensively, all night, I thought there were just stretches where we did things we want to do and too many stretches where we didn’t dictate very much. But there’s an opportunity to learn from that.”
On Idaho State’s size:
“They had good size. They were a big team, obviously, with the big guy inside. We have to work on rebounding the ball. We’re going to keep getting better at it. We’ve got to be more aggressive. We have to get more guys down there on the defensive boards, especially. Ro [Romero Osby] did a good job of leading us on the offensive glass and we have to keep working on that.”
On Barry Honoré’s second-half boost:
“I just came in the locker room and congratulated him. I think everybody did. Barry is a guy that works hard every day in practice and you have to root for him when he’s in the game because he works so hard. It was a real big stretch when he was in there and he played really well.”
OU Junior Forward Romero Osby
On his double-double in his OU debut:
“I have to give credit to my teammates, first of all. They found me in certain situations in the back of that zone. Coach (Kruger) is always preaching about going to the offensive glass and defensive glass, and that’s what I pride myself on. It just felt good to get out there and on the floor with these guys because I’ve been playing with them for a year (in practice). So it finally felt good to play with them and have this game experience with them.”
OU Senior Forward Barry Honoré
On the spark he provided in the second half:
“On the defensive end, I just tried to make plays for my team. Coming in, I know I have a role to play, and senior leadership. So I just tried to spark the team.”
OU Sophomore Guard Calvin Newell
On his role within the team:
“I talked to Coach (Kruger) earlier today, and he said, ‘If you put your team first, then everything else will fall into place.’ That’s what I tried to do. Tonight, I didn’t start, but I was cheering on my team and was more engaged. He preached about being more engaged all the time. So, I was just cheering on my teammates and the offense just came to me. I knew where I was supposed to be and knocked down shots when the ball came to me.”
Idaho State Head Coach Joe O’Brien
On using a 2-3 zone the entire game:
“We have played it all my six years at Idaho State. It has kept us in some games. My first game ever was at Marquette. We lost by three in overtime because they couldn’t deal with it. We have kids that play really hard. We are a little undersized for playing a Big 12 team. It kept us in the game. We made them shoot 3’s. At half I think they made three 2’s and four 3’s and that was it. Everything else was free throw line. It is a great equalizer if you’ve got kids that will play hard. When you’ve got enough size, with Chase Grabau on the floor, you can get away with it. We will probably play it 50 percent of the season.”
On if the turning point for OU was the back-to-back blocked shots in the second half:
“We got in some foul trouble. We had to play some lineups that have never been on the floor together in practice. We had three kids with three (fouls). We are making up stuff on the run. I mean we are three weeks into the season. We are putting lineups out there saying ‘What are we doing?’ but we had to. We had some kids that just aren’t used to playing together offensively. We figured at some point they were going to have some kind of run. They are just too big, strong and athletic for that not to let that happen at some point. To our kids’ credit, we let the bleeding stop and we stayed in it.”
On moral victories:
“I am pleased with our effort. I would have loved to win the game, but when you have 21 turnovers on the road you don’t win. You can stay close and some people can call it a moral victory, but I am too old for moral victories. I am greedy. I want to win. We have to go North Dakota and play Monday night and see if we can get one there.”
