Feb. 14, 2009
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Auburn head coach Jeff Lebo
Opening statement...
"I thought the game, really with teams that are mirror images of each other a little bit, played small, shooting the ball from the perimeter.
Obviously, Tay was on fire to start the game. It was a big start for us.
The first 10 or 12 minutes we were on fire; the last eight minutes and they were on fire.
"The problem is when you play them, you have to figure out how to defend them because they play four shooters and then they have Varnado inside who can score one-on-one in there so if you double them, they have shooters on the perimeter that you have to leave if you don't, he is certainly capable. We did a good job mixing on him to try and keep him a little uncomfortable.
"I thought that Vot and Brendon Knox were good again and did a nice job.
Tay was really good today offensively. Not only was he good offensively, but he rebounded the basketball. That was a key for us I think, because they let a lot of long shots and a lot of long rebounds and we did a pretty good job on the boards. They still got 13 [offensive rebounds], but overall, it's just a great win for our kids and I'm happy for them."
On Tay Waller's performances and if it was something he saw during his JuCo play...
"Yes, but it's in JuCo. It's just different. He can do this; he's capable of doing this. I saw it in JuCo and he can flat out get it going. If you look at our games, if he scores a lot and he plays well, it's like energy to our team. He's one of those guys that when he gets going, the rest of our guys play with a little more juice.
"DeWayne Reed was solid today; Frankie Sullivan was awfully good and solid today. Again, they are a hard team to try and defend. Our kids did a good job overall and found a way to get it done in the end."
On Mississippi State's 10-0 run to start second half...
"We were just mixing how we were guarding really, mixing how we were guarding the post more than anything in this game. They get you so spread out with their ability to shoot, every coach I know in the league is just trying to figure out how to play." The one thing that really hurt us more than anything is they haven't played much zone and they went and played some zone and it kind of took our rhythm away in the first half. In the second half, I thought we had a lot of possessions where we got some good looks offensively. We changed kind of what we were doing a little bit offensively and got them out of the zone and I thought that was the key.
"We got to the foul line this game and that was obviously good. We made shots and we shot it very well. We outscored them there by 14 on the foul line is huge. We wanted to make them drivers and they still got 35 three-point shot attempts us, that's still a little too many."
On Brendon Knox's play...
"He is playing much better. I think the last game gave him some confidence. I thought he did some good things in his time. He had eight points in nine minutes and three rebounds while battling [Jarvis] Varnado in there. He's getting better every single day. He's worked hard in practice, he's shown improvement in practice and he certainly deserves to be in there, maybe even more than he's playing.
Is there a different sense of purpose with the team...
"I think that winning obviously helps demeanor of the team, but we've got pretty good leadership in Korvotney Barber, Quantez Robertson and Rasheem Barrett. They have done a good job and they have worked hard in practice. They have stayed the course. We try not to get too down on the losses and not get too high when we win a few. It's hard with kids because they are emotionally young and immature in some ways. Their work habits, everyday, I haven't had any problem really with them all year long."
On Tay Waller's shot selection...
"He's got an ability to do that, that's why I give him a little more leeway because that's what his ability is. That's what he does. When he gets it going too, I even give him more because he can make tough ones and that is a God given gift. I understood that when I took him. I told him when I recruited him that I thought he could be the next Chris Lofton of the SEC West. To be him, he's got to be a bit more consistent.
He's really improved defensively and that has really helped us. We've challenged him to get some rebounds and what we're more proud of is that he got nine rebounds in tonight's game, eight of them defensive."
On Tay Waller slashing to the hoop...
"He's got to add that to his game. He has people jumping at him all the time, that's something he's going to have to work really hard on in the offseason because he's our best foul shooter. He's got to mix that in and be strong enough and tough enough to put it on the floor with contact. With those people jumping at him, he'll be able to take it in and do whatever he wants. That's something he'll have to work on to compliment his shooting in the offseason."
On what three-straight wins means for team...
"We're just battling, that's all. Our kids are battling one game at a time. Obviously, each game is important and there's not one that is more important than the other. It looks like we're playing with a little bit of confidence right now. We can't let it go if we lose a game and we can't be fragile with that. We know what we can do when we play together and play tough defense. When you look at teams in college basketball, there's fragileness to them. It use to be that if you lost four or five, you became fragile. Now, if you lose one game, you're fragile. We can't get too excited and we can't get too down if we lose a game."
Aftermath of Ole Miss, rally point?
"I told my team that we weren't going to panic, but that's the one game all year that I think that we competed close to what we've had all the rest of the year. Sometimes in horse races, you have a horse that runs in first, second or third every time in 10 races and then you have one that races last by 32 lengths. If you throw that one out, then you grade the horse by what he's done in the other races and that's what I told the team. They were disappointed. They knew. I didn't have to get on them real hard because they knew that they played bad and that they didn't do the things that were necessary and that they didn't play with energy. That's just something that you have to deal with and move on from. You have a lot of those games in basketball."
Halftime mindset...
"They made shots and they made some tough ones. We didn't panic after they made some tough shots. We defended them in a lot of ways pretty well and they can do that when you watch them play, you can get frustrated as a team and as a coach because when they make them, it can burst your will. I said that if they make a few, we have to be tough and not let that effect us. We have to keep our heads in the defensive game and in the offensive game and that's hard to do."
On Frankie Sullivan...
"He's been solid and better defensively. They zoned us a lot so I played him some more minutes. He's tough and he's getting better defensively.
It was one his best of games played. He gets tough around the ball. He gets on the floor and grabs those long rebounds I thought did a nice job being around the ball a lot."
Korvotney Barber, F
On getting to .500 in the SEC...
"I think this is the first time we've been at .500 in the SEC since I've been here. It's a real big game. The rest of the road is just building on the momentum that we've already got right now. Hopefully we can go to Georgia and keep the momentum going and get the SEC win."
On being up 17 in the first half...
"They have a lot of good shooters on their team and we just had to find the shooters in transition. We were kind of weak in transition today, but they were making a lot of shots and a lot of tough shots, too. They had pretty good shooters, but I think we did a good job defending it."
On going against Jarvis Varnado...
"He has a real good shot from down low. He looks kind of skinny, but he isn't weak at all. I just try to do my best. I think I did a pretty good job on him. I think he got a couple of buckets, but I think I did a pretty good job overall."
On Brandon Knox playing better...
"Yeah he has. I try to stay on Brandon and just tell him to stay focused and go hard at practice and it will pay off soon."
On working on three-point shots in practice...
"Tonight was a good night for three-point shooting. Tay hit like five in the first half, I think. It was a pretty good shooting night for us."
On making 7- of-8 at the free throw line and the team shooting better as a whole... "Like Frankie said, we come in early to practice and everyone leaves late, and that's one of the things I've been working on. It paid off a lot today."
Tay Waller, G
On your performance today...
"It just felt good today. In shoot around, I was very loose today for some reason and it just carried over to the game. It felt good the whole game."
On getting to the basket in the second half...
"Yeah, coach was saying they were just flying at my shot, so second half, I just put it on them and it felt good to finally get a layup."
When was the last time you had nine rebounds in a game?
"High school."
On more aggressively looking for shots when shooting well...
"Yeah, and my teammates make a better effort to get me the ball when I'm scoring. So when I got two, DeWayne Reed told me to keep working the ball and he was looking for me."
On remembering another time that you came out and shot that well...
"Just about every time in junior college, but this is my first time doing it here, so it felt really good to do it here for the first time.
The coaches knew I could do it, so I'm glad they stuck with me and believed in me."
Did you feel like they were open looks or were you just shooting anyway?
"I was just shooting it anyway. It felt good when I caught it and I felt like I could get it off. Coach told me to keep shooting it."
On having a rough day and being afraid the coaches would tell you scale back shooting...
"The times I'm not hitting, the coaches tell me to take open shots than I do when I'm making them. They never lost confidence in me, and I think that means a lot right now."
Frankie Sullivan, G
On the second half...
"Coach Lebo just told us that Tay [Waller] was hot and to feed him and feed off him. Coach Lebo just told me to keep my eyes on the ball and when I catch it, just let it rip."
On winning three in a row after losing at Ole Miss and what has changed...
"The team effort. We come to practice and practiced much harder and everybody's together. Everyone's talking to each other and telling everyone that we need to get better. Guys are staying in the gym and coming in early and leaving late and we're proving that by the game.
Also, our blue squad [transfers and redshirt players] have been helping us out. They've been coming at us every practice and doing a great job on the scout team."
On looking forward to playing Mississippi State because they play smaller and with several guards...
"No, you don't look forward to playing guards that shoot like that because you're always running off screens and you get tired really fast.
Coach had to sub in and out and that's a big transition to make from playing big man to playing with guards. I'd rather play big man."
Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury
Opening statements...
"Give Auburn credit. Jeff (Lebo) does a terrific job with his team. He had his team ready to play and had a big plan, as always. He's one of the better coaches in this league because his team is always prepared.
"They came out and hit us in the mouth hard very early. (Tay) Waller had five three-pointers in those first five minutes. It was happening so quick. I don't know if any of the shots were easy. Give him some credit and give Auburn some credit.
"You can talk about our bad defense, but you have to give Auburn some credit. (Waller) jumped up and made some shots. We got behind by 17 points. Most of the time when you're down by 17 points on the road, it will hit you in the back in the end of the game.
"Give our kids some credit because we found a way to fight back. We found a way to cut the game down to two points, but we spent a lot of energy doing it. We came out in the second half to go on a 10-3 run and to go up by five at the 17-minute mark. At that time, Waller got them going again and (Frankie) Sullivan got them going. They started making shots and we didn't make some shots. It sounds that simple sometimes. It wasn't that we turned the ball over; it's just that they made some shots and we didn't make some shots. The game got separated there a little bit."
On any effects from the double overtime game against LSU...
"If there were any effects, I don't think that we could've come back from 17 down. Most teams would've caved in. I thought that for the most part, we had 40 points at half time. We gave up 42, but Waller got them going and made huge shots. I'm not going to sit here and say that there was no effect, but I'm not going to make any excuses for it.
"We were up five in the second half, so there was no excuse. Did we expend a lot of energy by coming back? Yes. Sometimes what's a good shot is just fool's gold. You can shoot a lot of shots, but those same shots may not be the type of shots to be taking when you're up by five on the road and that's a fine line. We didn't make them in the second half and they made them."
On how much Tay Waller affected the game...
"I don't know what we could've done better. He hit some deep shots. We were chasing and we had a tall guy on him. We tried to hit him on screens and off the bounce. We knew that he was capable of this kind of game during SEC play and he played like this even before SEC play. He's a great shooter. He was 8-for-12 and that gets to be contagious among a team's energy. He got them going again in that second half."
On how difficult it is to come back in a game...
"It's never easy to come back anywhere, home or on the road, in this league because everybody is good. When you get down by 17 on the road, not very often are you going to come back. It just doesn't happen in this league. That's why I said to credit this team because we could've caved in, especially after coming out of the LSU game. We could've used a poor excuse by being down because those 17 points were pretty quick.
At the 10-minute mark, we were already down by 17. We could've caved in, but we fought back. You can fight back and play hard, but sometimes that's not good enough. They made some shots and we didn't make some shots. It sounds pretty simple, but that's what it comes down to sometimes."
Mississippi Player Quotes
Barry Stewart, G
On defending Tay Waller...
"Really, I didn't have him, but when I got on him it was just a lot of movement, screening, but no difference. I got on him late in the game and by then he was on a good rhythm. I just tried to keep him away from the ball."
On difficulty getting back in the lead...
"It's very difficult. We made an early run there in the second half. I think we were feeling pretty good and knocked down some big shots. I think it took a little bit out of the team tonight."
On joining the 1,000 point club...
"It just means I'm playing a lot. I don't even know how many people are in the 1,000 point club. It probably would have been much better if I had known that and we had won tonight."
Dee Bost, G
On anything emotionally carrying over from LSU game...
"We talked about that coming into this game that wasn't going to be an excuse, but they just made shots and played really good tonight. You have to give them credit. They came out and played hard."
