OU Head Coach Jeff Capel
Opening comment:
“Congrats to A&M, they were the better team. They are very, very good. They are disciplined, they defend you, have great leadership with their two seniors and they played well enough to win tonight.
“Our three seniors have meant so much to this program. Those three guys have had big-time contributions on University of Oklahoma men’s basketball. We are going to miss them here, but we are now focusing our attention on the Big 12 tournament and we are excited about playing next Wednesday.”
On looking ahead to post season play:
“(Next week) needs to be our only focus. Hopefully, it’s something after that. Hopefully, we can play well enough to earn a right, but we haven’t earned that right now. The only thing we have earned is an opportunity because everyone gets to play in the Big 12 tournament. It’s important for us to go and play well and try to get a win. Obviously we haven’t won in a while, since we beat Texas here. But we have to have better effort and better discipline in order to get that. It looks like we are going to play Oklahoma State and certainly they beat us really bad last time we played them. It’s certainly going to take a big-time effort from us.”
On if he could take any positives from today’s game:
“Not really. The emotion of the seniors at the end. You can’t have emotion like that unless something means something to you -- unless you care deeply or passionately about something. A lot of our younger guys should take a cue from that.”
On the season:
“We’ve really only played four conference games with Willie (Warren) where he was healthy. If you look at it, he had struggled against Baylor, struggled against Oklahoma State, played very well against Missouri and I thought he played well at Texas A&M. Then he gets hurt in practice (before) Texas Tech and was never the same after that. That gave us only two guys that had any experience in Big 12 play and as far as extended playing time -- that’s Cade (Davis) and that’s Tony Crocker. I hear a lot of teams and a lot of people in this league talk about they’re the youngest team or they have so many young guys. But we’ve played seven guys with Willie out and four are freshmen. (Other teams) may have a lot of young guys, but (they) don’t play a lot of young guys. Again, it’s not an excuse. A lot of this stuff is self-inflicted. We can’t do anything about injuries, but some of the stuff that has happened to this team is self-inflicted. That’s something we can control , and we haven’t done a good job of doing that and I haven’t done a good job of doing that.”
On if this has been his toughest season as a coach:
“Yes it is. You go through things like this, and guys are in the hall of fame who have gone through it or may be currently going through it. You have two choices. You can give into it or you can learn from it. The thing I have been saying is no regrets, just lessons. This has been a tremendous learning experience for me.”
Senior Forward Beau Gerber
On the past four years:
“It’s gone by in a flash. It seems like just yesterday we were here running sprints in the summer on the practice court. But I still remember a bunch of important games. It’s been a fast four years but a great four years.”
Senior Forward Ryan Wright
On his expectations coming to OU from UCLA:
“My expectations when I left UCLA were to play more, first and foremost. My expectations were to play more and to contribute to help this team reach a lot of success. I feel like in my three years here, even the first year when I couldn’t play, I feel like I’ve done that. This year we struggled. A lot of our losses were disappointing and the outcome was disappointing, but looking back on my three years here I feel like I made the right decision in coming here. When I look back on this I’ll be happy and I’ll be able to live with it.”
On Beau Gerber’s contributions off the court:
“Since I’ve been here, he’s been one of our team leaders. The media doesn’t see it and the fans don’t see it but he’s been one of our team leaders. He is a vocal leader. He tries to get on guys when he feels like they’re not working hard and he does his best to help the team win. Sometimes that gets under guys’ skin, but that’s part of the growing process of a team. He’s brave enough to step up and take a challenge to be that guy to say enough is enough, we can’t do this. I just admire and respect him so much for everything I’ve seen him do these past three years I’ve been here.”
Senior Guard Tony Crocker
On the past four years:
“It’s gone by fast. Not too long ago, we just got here working out in the summer. Now we’re in our last game.”
On how a year like this happens:
“Not concentrating. We were a fairly new team with a lot of new guys. We tried to do all that we could to mix well and have chemistry and to be successful. We have good chemistry, like guys are friends, but I guess on the court we didn’t mix very well. We came up short. We just didn’t concentrate on certain things. Just having the security that somebody would be on the help side, or something like that. Really, throughout the whole year, we couldn’t really get stops on defense. We were inconsistent in scoring, too.”
On next week’s Big 12 Championship:
“We’re just concentrating on winning four games. We only have to beat someone once. (Assistant) Coach (Mark) Cline has been asking us if we think there’s anybody in the league that we think we can beat one time. That’s all. There’s nobody in the league that we can’t beat one time. We’re just going to go out there and take it one game at a time and see if we can’t get four wins.”
Texas A&M Head Coach Mark Turgeon
Opening comment:
“I thought Oklahoma started out great and shot the ball well. They had us down nine at the 12 (minute) timeout and the eight (minute) timeout. From the eight timeout until the finish, I thought defensively we were as good as we’ve been. Our defense was great. Our ball screen defense was great. We played shots and we rebounded. It was a really good second half defense for us.”
On clinching a bye in the Big 12 Tournament:
“That’s big for us. Physically, we have some guys banged up and some guys are healthy. That extra day is really going to help us. Starting out in the league 3-3 and ending up 11-5 and getting a bye says a lot about these guys. The reason that we’re so successful is that these guys bring an unbelievable amount of toughness to the program. A lot of the games that we’ve won over the last four years with these guys have been because of toughness.”
Senior Forward Brian Davis
On this group of seniors winning more games than any other:
“It’s a combination of having the right guys and teamwork. We’re a family out there playing as hard as we can.”
