Oklahoma Head Coach Jeff Capel
On James Anderson’s first-half scoring
“James Anderson was phenomenal in the first half. I told our guys he was coming off a game where he fouled out with 10 points at Texas Tech. I thought we did a decent job on him at our place, but that kid is really, really good. He has a lot of pride and we knew he was going to come out looking to have a huge game. He certainly did. He carried their team in the first half.”
On his team’s rebounding struggles
“Where I thought the game got away from us in the first half was offensive rebounding. I thought we were executing pretty well and I thought we were doing some good things, but we went through a stretch of about three minutes where we could not get a rebound. Our initial first-shot defense wasn’t bad, but the offensive rebounds were what killed us. They scored 13 points off of them in first half.”
On his team’s toughness level
“We could never recover. We got a steal to start the half, but I thought we went in weak. We didn’t anticipate someone coming and we went in a little weak. That’s kind of how we played for the majority of the game. I thought we played weak. I thought we were soft. I didn’t think we were tough. We have to be a lot tougher in order to win in this league.”
Oklahoma State Head Coach Travis Ford
Opening Statement
"After a long week of some tough practices I was concerned how much we had left in us, but I also thought that we made practices so hard I was wanting this game to not seem easy, but 40 minutes is easy compared to two and a half hours of nonstop practice. We got great contributions from everybody on our team. Marshall Moses came off the bench and did terrific. Matt Pilgrim had maybe his best game. Everybody played terrific and I think it might have been Fred Gulley's best game of the year as far as the things he did that helped us win."
On Oklahoma
"Oklahoma in the first half played extremely well. They played very good basketball in the first half. It was a very tight game. It feels good because I thought we played well and I thought we responded after a tough week."
On improving their offense
"We've been looking at enough film and studying enough to realize that our offense was hurting our defense. We believe we're a very good defensive team. We're a little small defensively and it hurts us at times when teams shoot over us, but we like our defensive positioning. We tried working on our offense this week to help our defense. I thought we did a great job of carrying over what we practiced to the game."
On James Anderson
"It's incredible. It's really amazing how much he puts us on his shoulders in the first half. I reminded our guys at halftime that we've been here before in other games and we haven't responded in the second half. We picked it up in the second half."
On making positive plays
"One of the themes for this week has been make more positive plays than negative plays. In the month of February your negative plays should be way down. If you look at the stat line you see 18 assist to 10 turnovers. We have six or seven more rebounds than they did. Everybody's stat line was very positive and that's the key in the month of February; If you're going to have success you're going to make mistakes but you better have a lot more positives than negatives."
On the crowd
"Great crowd. I went out last night and there were eight or nine tents with students camping out for the game so we took some pizzas out there and took pictures with everyone. We had a great time and it was really enjoyable. Hopefully everybody had fun at this game. Hopefully they enjoyed watching how hard this team plays. We're going to play hard every night and when we get the crowd support like we got today it gives us such a huge advantage here in Gallagher-Iba Arena. It makes it the rowdiest arena in the country."
James Anderson
On his shooting
“I was feeling it a little bit, Keiton got me started from the jump when he got hot so I just kinda fed off him.”
On the mindset after finding out Warren and Gallon wouldn’t be playing –
“Coach told us in the locker room right before tipoff they wouldn’t be playing, but with or without them we wouldn’t be focusing on them, we’d be focusing on our team, that was our whole plan was to focus on our team.”
On why he didn’t try to score as much in the second half
“I just came back out and attacked at the beginning and then started to look for my teammates. My scoring opened everything up for them. I just tried looking for them, playing smarter and getting them involved."
On how sweet it was getting the win here when the game at OU was so close
“Yea it was great getting the win at our home court where the fans could enjoy it with us. Our first game there, we could’ve had it and had a road win, but things happen and came up short so that’s why we had to get revenge up here."
Obi Muonelo
If he smelled blood once he found out Warren and Gallon weren’t playing
“Not really, like coach said before the game, if a team is two men down they usually come out even hungrier looking to get the win, so we wanted to come out focused no matter who was playing for OU so we could get the victory.”
On how the week off helped
“It helped us a lot, we worked extremely hard this week and were prepared for this game, we definitely were ready.”
On how it felt to score 97 points when the offense has been a struggle at times this year
“That’s how practice is every day, striking the ball, taking quick shots but precise shots, having good ball movement and good buckets in transition. Matt Pilgrim did a good job moving around the bucket, getting us easy baskets. We all played together this game.”
On really enjoying perhaps his last bedlam game
“It was great, our crowd was as loud as it’s been all year and my teammates were telling me it’s my last one so go out there and have fun and I did.”
On how everyone brought their A game tonight
“I think for the most part everyone came prepared and played well. I give everyone at least an A or A minus, everyone came to play and had a good attitude and was ready to play.”
Keiton Page
On how much the week helped considering how many minutes he’s been playing
“It helped a lot, not just with the rest but it helped since we need to recuperate and get our team back together and working on the things that make us better. That was the whole focus this week was working on making more positives than negatives happen and that’s what we did tonight.”
On if it felt like a career night
“I don’t know, I was so into the game from the tipoff to the very end it was a very exciting game. It was one of those games where Coach Ford always tells us to get lost in the game and have fun and tonight was just one of those nights.”
