University of Tennessee Athletics
Postgame Quotes
January 18, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 18, 2003
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Vanderbilt vs. Tennessee
January 18, 2003
TENNESSEE HEAD COACH BUZZ PETERSON
"I'm pleased with the victory. We played hard tonight, but not very smart. We made some plays down the stretch. The big difference for us was that while we had 15 turnovers in the first half, we cut it to five in the second half.
"Corey Smith stretched us out with his outside shooting. Vanderbilt is a good team that has been playing very well. They have a good overall offense and don't rely so much on the outside shooting as they have in the past.
"Thaydeus hit some big threes. His technical wasn't very smart. It was a case of running his mouth. We coaches need to keep the players under control. We wanted this kind of game from Holden, even including his emotions. But an unnecessary technical foul really gets under my skin. We want him to continue to play like he did tonight, but he will pay the price in practice on Monday for the technical.
"Smith and Matt Freije can hit the three pointers. Crump played a lot on Freije and finished the game with five steals. He played very well on defense, but he still needs to be more aggressive on offense."
VANDERBILT HEAD COACH KEVIN STALLINGS
"Scoring droughts have been a consistent problem for us. You try to put your best basket makers on the floor, so it's difficult to answer. Any answer I might give would be interpreted as criticizing players. We need guys to make plays and shots. We had a horribly bad shot after the technical foul.
"Our problems are a lot worse on the defensive end. We were just as bad defensively as offensively. They shot 50 percent both halves. We had two starting guards who didn't score, so we are really playing three on five. We've gone from being pretty good defensively to not being a good defensive team. They had open shots all night long. In the second half we couldn't stop them. We are not a great scoring team to begin with. The last two games, our defense hasn't given us anything. We're pretty broke right now. It may be a lack of discipline or guys just playing as hard as they have to versus as hard as they can. Some of them are not very good defensively. There are a lot of reasons. I can't shoot it for them. I can't encourage them any more than they have been encouraged.
"Mario Moore is the only guard who can take and make the shots. We're just not guarding well.
"I knew Corey Smith was going to play well because he's been practicing well. You can see the guys who are on an uptick and who aren't."
