University of Tennessee Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Vols 70, Texas Southern 58
November 20, 2014 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 20, 2014
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Tennesse head coach Donnie Tyndall
​(Opening statement)
"Let me start by saying this that there was no way we would have won that game tonight if it weren't for our fans. I want to start by thanking them. I thought the second half I was kind of encouraging them to get into the game. We made our run as they were getting loud and into it. So we certainly appreciate them. It was a big key tonight. I give Texas Southern a lot of credit. I said before the game there were a scrappy bunch who play extremely hard. They are well coached. They cause problems because many times they have five guards on the floor at the same time. You are constantly in close out situations where you forward and big guys have to guard a perimeter player with a dribble. They are a tough match-up. I think in the second half our press kind of wore them down a little bit. We caused some turn overs. We always use the term take their legs during the last 8 or 12 minutes of the game. We want to take their legs where they are not making as many jump shots. They miss free throws because of fatigue. I thought that was the case tonight."
(On the line up change and Willie Carmichael providing an energy burst)
"Jabari (McGhee) played very well against VCU and Dominic (Woodson) hurt his hand in practice. He didn't have a good practice the day before he hurt his hand. That position was up for debate. Willie Carmichael was back to the old Willie Carmichael that he was the first month of the school year. So we rewarded those guys. Armani (Moore) was one of those guys who earned a starting position all preseason then he had the injury where he missed a lot of practices so Robert (Hubbs) had stepped in for him. Armani has earned that spot back."
(On Willie Carmichael's changes from the first practice until now)
"I think with any young guy they can sometimes hit a wall. He plays so hard as you guys see. He practices the same way. I think when you are into school four or five or six weeks a young guy's body kind of hits a wall. He didn't have that same energy and that same motor running toughness that makes him good for about a two and half week stretch where some of these other guys passed him by.​"
(On coaching tonight and getting the first home game win)
"It was awesome. Our fans were fantastic. That is so important to me. You always want to protect your home court. It has been a dream of mine for a long time to be a head coach in this league. Tennessee, as I have said, is a dream job. It was an opportunity for us to go out and hopefully impress our home fans and they will come back and watch us play. Certainly it was a great experience and I'm glad we got the 'W'."
(On the players going into the crowd after the game)
"It was something I asked them to do after the game. I just think as we are growing our program and we are building this thing with a bunch of young guys. I want the fans to get to know me and our players. It is just a way to show some gratitude and let them know how much they are appreciated. I don't know if we will do it every game but I just wanted to on our season opening and let them know how much we appreciated them."
(On the second half forcing turnovers and "taping their legs")
"Our teams have always done just that. The last 8 to 10 minutes we wear on people and take their legs. I don't know if we will do that every night against really good competition, but that is certainly what we want to strive to do. In our press we tell our guys that it is not always about getting traps. It is just wearing on them and making them earn every dribble. Every bounce is contested. I thought we did a good job of that in the second half."
(On Josh Richardson rebounding the ball)
"Well no question about it I expect that from Josh. He has great length. He is one of our best athletes. He is a tough kid, so there is no reason he can't average about five rebounds a game this season. We have to get everybody rebounding the ball. In the first half we gave up eight offensive rebounds. Second half was better only four, but until our team can constantly gets a body on someone with our lack of size and girth that is going to be an achilles heel."
(On Josh Richardson's time he played tonight, 36 minutes)
"Yeah it is hard. I could tell the last two or three minutes he was on his shorts and a little bit tired. That is the role he is going to have on our team. Hopefully as some of these guys continue to grow maybe we can shrink that number a little bit, but he is a guy we depend on. 36 minutes at the point and pressing is a tall order."
(On Josh Richardson playing point guard)
"Well you play 36 minutes and I believe he had zero turnovers, so he did a good job taking care of the basketball. Had two assists, two steals, eight rebounds. The biggest thing is just sometimes we don't trust the offense, by that I mean, we may kind of what I call a broken floor, the floor is not set, we don't always have to call a set play, just get it out of your hands and enter to a wing and let's run offense. The tape that we show him, he will eventually do that. It is just kind of what I call, that natural point guard feel, which he doesn't have totally yet but on the flip side he does some things at that position that some natural point guards can't do."
(On his zone starting to click with the players)
"I do. I still think we have to do a better job of guarding the dribble. When you say they made 18 field goals, probably five or six of those were on second shots. So if you block out, now they are are 12-for-40 instead of 18-for-48 and you win that game by 25 or 22, whatever it might be. So I think we are doing a decent job on first shots but you have to end the possession with a rebound. A couple times tonight we went with one hand and it goes out of bounds, they get another possession and end up scoring. All those things we will hopefully clean up as we move forward."
(On wearing teams down with pressure in last 10 minutes of game)
"It is. The biggest thing I would like to do more of, though, and we have done it a couple times, we usually spurt teams. Might be 24-22, and we go on a 12-to-4 run, and then you have three spurts like that throughout the course of the game and usually it is too much for the opponent to overcome. Tonight we really had maybe two spurts like that and usually if you can make it three or four then you have a chance to separate."
(On Armani Moore's defensive hustle)
"So many times, I don't know how many blocks they had him for but it seemed like he had three, yeah, three blocks, two steals, had eight rebounds. So it is what I always talk about. If you are not scoring the ball, because that doesn't happen every night, what else do you do to help our team win. Tonight he obviously did a lot of different things to help us."
(On Willie Carmichael's aggressive style of play)
"Willie is an aggressive guy and I don't think he avoids contact. The problem is he is about a cheeseburger over 200, and he being physical is a little different than in about a year and a half when he is going to be about 220, 225, being physical. He is one guy that doesn't avoid contact and has a body on guys at post times."
(On Willie Carmichael's potential)
"I think he has a chance to be an All-SEC type guy by the time he is a junior. Like I have said many times, there is a lot of his game that reminds me of Kenneth [Faried]. But it can't be good one day and okay three days. It can't be good one day and bad the next. He has to be consistent in everything he does, early in the year, as I said, he was very consistent. I think his body maybe hit a wall a little bit. But he has been very good the last, probably, five or six practices. It showed up. I tell our guys all the time, you are going to play the way you practice. If you don't bring it to the practice floor, you don't practice the right way, you are not going to play well in game. And he played well tonight in large part because of the way he practices."
(On getting the jitters out in the second game)
"It is just, again, growing and developing,. These guys played their first game against a top-10 type team on national TV. There were jitters, there is no other way to say it. They were a little bit nervous and apprehensive. We relaxed the second half and all our guys are going to continue to get better and better each and every game."
(On Devon Baulkman)
"You can see, he is a good athlete. He can score the ball. He give us another playmaker off the dribble. We just have to get him defending. There is no reason he can't be a good defender because he has good length and athleticism. But again it is a little bit of a time deal for all these guys adjusting to having to guard a good player. Some nights in high school and junior college, you don't have to guard a guy who can really play. At this level, you are going to guard a guy, especially no the perimeter, that can really, really play every night."
(On having Dominic Woodson back for the tournament)
"Yeah, I think he will be back by then. I would guess and hope that he will practice this weekend and should be ready to go."
Tennesse junior guard Kevin Punter
(On the press affecting them)
"I could see it in their face. Some of them wanted the ball. Some where fumbling it after a while. When we see that, we have to take them on"
(On the feeling of causing problems with press)
"It feels good. Everybody was rolling. That is how we play, and it is how we want to play."
(On having to play point guard)
"We are still good. We are still growing. I am still feeding off of Josh Richardson at the point guard role. I am not a point guard, but we have great teammates around us that help us out. They get to the right spots. It is little things that go a long way."
Tennesse freshman forward Willie Carmichael III
(On going up for the block)
"It is thanks to my teammates. I live with Jabari McGhee. I learn from his game. That sheds off on me, and I bring that to the court."
(On how he responded to limited playing time against VCU)
"It didn't bother me. I can still contribute to the team by being the biggest cheerleader that I can be. It did motivate me in the gym, though."
(On the momentum shift in the second half)
When the energy from the crowd came in, it picked us up a lot. We just pushed on from there."
Tennesse junior guard Armani Moore
(On new role on the team)
I know I have to bring it each and every night. Can' really take any nights off. Eventually, I started to pull it all together,I started scoring a little bit, blocking a couple of shots. That always gets me going little bit. Once I got my groove I was able to get a couple of buckets
(On Willie Carmichael)
I always see with Willie (Carmichael) in practice, he has his moments when sometimes he might feel down, but at the end of the day he's always gonna go hard. That's what Willie does. He showed tonight that he can really defend and block shots.
(On crowd after the block)
That was a big energy boost for us tonight when the crowd got into it. I feel like that not only helps us get into it, but it makes a small play look bigger than what it is because the crowd is really into it and that just gets us going.
Texas Southern head coach Mike Davis
(Opening statement)
"I thought the first half we executed our press attack, they turned it up a little bit in the second half. It didn't bother us too much, we just started throwing the ball away. We had four turnovers in the first half and ended up with 13, so that's nine in the second half. We missed some layups, we just didn't execute. When you have a team where nobody has played for you the previous season, you just kind of go helter-skelter.
"Their fans did a good job of getting behind them and brining the energy."
(On his lineup)
"We're playing with three starters out, but that's no excuse. We have enough in the locker room to compete better and take care of the basketball."
(On Tennessee's adjustments)
"If we can have two halves where we just execute, don't shoot it quick, don't turn the ball over, just trust our system, then that helps us. We were in a situation late in the game where they just made every play and we had breakdowns on the defensive end. You have to give them a lot of credit, they adjusted just a little bit and it was enough to rattle us."
(On playing 15 of the first 16 games on the road)
"That's just the way it's always been here. My first year, we were fortunate that we got two games at home because we had a tournament scheduled and it fell through. We had no home games last year scheduled. It's a part of the growth process for us, it's no problem. We definitely want to get better. Our focus is to get better every game and when we get to conference play, we can compete. We play 18 conference games, so it's like a real, new season for us."
