Sam
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Jeff Capel
Cade Davis
Steven Pledger
Northern State Coach Paul Sather
Opening comment:
“First of all I’m proud to get a win, I’m pleased with that. Northern State is a team that works really hard, is well coached, and they defend you well. You have to give credit to those guys; they played a good basketball game and led for a good part of the game. I am actually pleased with a lot that we did. I know there is a lot that we have to work on but we were able to do some really good things and guys stepped up and made some big plays for us.
“This was really good game for our basketball team. I thought we got off to a pretty good start. One of the things I think that happened with us was that some of our guys were so excited to play that when they got out there they got nervous and became a little tentative. We were so out of character for how we have been playing the past couple of days in practice.”
On shooting from the perimeter:
“I thought in the first half we were a little bit selfish because some of the 3’s we were taking were just off of one pass or no pass. That is not the way we want to play. Certainly we are a team that is going to have to make shots from the perimeter, but I thought when we got penetration and kicked the ball back out and reversed it -- those were the 3’s that we made. In the second half, we did a lot better job of executing and I thought we did a better job of screening. And when the ball got reversed, we were able to drive and get to the free throw line.”
On the defense improving:
“Defensively, there is a lot to be desired. We still have a long way to go but I knew that coming in. This game just hopefully opened our guys’ eyes to that, and we will get back into the gym on Thursday and we look forward to working harder.
"We did a lot better job with rebounding, but this is something that is going to be a work in progress all year. But we knew that. We are going to have to do a lot better job blocking out and really pursue rebounds. We are going to have to get down in our stance more and get down for however long it takes. Sometimes we would be down (in a stance) and have a good defensive possession for 18 or 19 seconds, but guys need to understand if it takes 35 seconds that we cannot afford to have any breakdowns.”
On coming back to win with so many new guys:
“I thought we did a great job of battling adversity for a team with so many new guys that haven’t been through anything yet. We have been through some tough practices, but really no game situations like this. I thought we did a very good job of battling, and our guys kept fighting. We had some guys come off the bench who stepped up and came in and gave us some good minuets in crunch time. We had three new guys out there in crunch time (Calvin Newell, Barry Honore and Abdul Ahmed) and those were the guys who were making a lot of the plays. So I am very pleased with that.”
Cade Davis
On the second half:
“I think our defense picked up a little bit. We’re nowhere where we need to be defensively, but at times we got stops when we needed to and ended up making some tough shots and getting ahead, then getting to the free throw line and making our free throws.”
On teammate Steven Pledger:
“I think with Steven and I being experienced we know that we need to come out and give our energy some way somehow. Steven was shooting the ball really well and we rely on him to do that. He did that for us in the second half, which really gave us a boost, and it carried over on the defensive end.”
On defense:
“We’ve been struggling in practice. That’s one thing Coach has always been harping on us: defense, defense, defense. We want our defense to be the result of why we start making shots. Defensively we weren’t sound in the first half, and even there towards the first of the second half. That’s something we’ve got to work on, but we got stops when we needed to.”
On Cameron Clark:
“He’ll get better and better each game. His first game, getting him out there, getting used to the feel of the game, and just the flow of the game, things like that. He made some good shots and did some good things for us. Especially at the end getting rebounds. You’ll see his athleticism help us tremendously throughout the year.”
On the season outlook:
“We’re not getting ready for Northern State, we’re getting ready for OSU, Kansas, and Kansas State. Those guys have monsters down low. We need to make sure we’re on the boards, boxing out, no matter who we’re playing. So that was the main thing Coach talked about. We’ve got to get stops, we’ve got to get rebounds and get into the flow of the game and be able to break away and get that lead up the way need it.”
Steven Pledger
On tonight’s game:
“I just kept the maturity. Last year I don’t think I ever did that. It was fun. I come in and play and do what I have to do, stay on the court, and come out with a win.”
On playing point guard:
“It felt good. I’ve been playing point in practice a lot. It was a little bit of an adjustment for the game, but I feel like I did well.”
On attacking the basket:
“I’ve been working on that all spring, summer, and fall. When I’m at home I work out with my father. We did a lot of going to the rack moves, one dribble, two dribbles, getting to the basket and pulling up for jumpers. I felt comfortable doing everything I did tonight.”
Northern State Coach Paul Sather
General comment:
“I didn’t really know what to think. The biggest thing we wanted to try and focus on was trying to come in and really try to know that these guys were going to push us to certain extremes that we maybe haven’t been able to do in practice. I was a little surprised to be up at half with missing as many layups as we did early, but I thought our guys competed hard. I thought that it was kind of a grind game and that both teams played pretty hard. It just wasn’t always the prettiest game.”
On Northern State’s performance:
“We just didn’t know what to expect. We were just trying to work on getting five guys up in the stance defensively. We over-handled the ball way too much; I knew that might be a concern. We lost a point guard to a broken foot, Brett Newton, right out of the gate this season. We had a post man who is still coming back from an ACL injury, so we have a lot of guys that don’t have a ton of experience. I had no idea what to expect. We had an over/under, we didn’t really, but we had an over/under of turnovers going in of about 25. I took the under, but I was hoping to keep it to about 16. The biggest thing was that we wanted to be the best team we could be. Hang through any adversity we were facing and being a team. I thought they did a good job of that; not pointing fingers, taking responsibility and not holding on to a bad play that they made and trying to make the next play. Those are things that are positives, there are a ton of things we can improve on. I think we can take a ton of positives just from a team standpoint.”
On Northern State’s rankings:
“We’re preseason eighth. I’m a new coach, replacing Don Myer who is an incredible person but an incredible coach as well. Our league is very good, Wynona State has been to the national championship and St. Cloud has been to the Final Four. There are a lot of teams that have done well in our league; our league is very, very good. So we’re eighth, but I don’t put much in pre-season rankings. Whether we’re one or we’re eight or 14th, if you’re looking at that stuff you’re paying attention to the wrong things.”
