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POSTGAME QUOTES: USF 71, Houston 62
1/23/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Recap | Kelvin Sampson
Opening Statement
"It is disappointing on different levels. Basketball is a simple game, you have to make your shots. You can analyze until you are paralyzed. This is a very simple game; it always has been. When you are dealing with the kids like ours, with any coach, those made baskets kind of fuel you both ways. Obviously, you are playing everybody tough and you are not really getting over the hump. We played Cincinnati tough. I don't care what the final score was, that was a close game until the end. We played Connecticut and SMU tough, and then we come home today and we get off to such a poor start shooting the basketball. You just have to do a better job of getting our guys ready to play and get over the hump. When things are going like this, you don't look any further than the head coach. Everything stops right there. I take responsibility for this. I have to get our guys ready to play and put them in a better position to where they can be successful."
On the positive takeaways from the game
"One of things that jumps out at me is that we are the No. 1 offensive rebounding team in the conference. The other night we had 23 offensive rebounds. The thing that we try and do every game, we try to get 50 percent of our missed shots. The other night we missed 35 shots, I may be off on one or two, but if you get 23 offensive rebounds then that is energy. Tonight, we missed 35 shots, and we had 11 offensive rebounds. That tells you about what our energy level was tonight. When you miss as many open shots as we did in the stretches, at the free-throw line and the field then the other team will start feeling like they can win. They have good players. It doesn't matter how many you have, we had seven players last year and won four games in a row. Numbers are overrated. The players they have are good players. We just didn't compete as hard as I would have liked to see us compete, and that starts with the head coach."
On rebounding from the previous three games
"That just sounds like you are giving us an excuse, and I am not big on excuses. You only get to play 30 of these games, and individually they are all important. I am not in to excuses. We had a scouting report. We talked about our game plan and how we wanted to play. But everything starts with effort, your energy and enthusiasm. We've had some great games this year, but every game by itself is no different than the previous one or the next one. We didn't come out and play this one the right way. I apologize to our fan base for that, but that is on the head coach."
On playing sophomore guard Wes VanBeck
"I was just really looking for a guy who could make an open shot. Wes (VanBeck) has been our best shooter every day in practice. I see how hard he works on his own and it was time to reward the kid. We were getting open shots, Eric Weary had two. I don't know if anybody was within 10 feet of him either time. I figured that Wes had no shots and he is a better shooter. We told him to drive it. I told our guys to quit shooting threes and drive the ball; try to get to the free throw line and see if we can get them in foul trouble. The problem is, when we get to the free-throw line we struggle there too."
On improving free throw percentage
"I'm 60 years old. Let me tell you something about free throw shooting, son. I've coached 26 teams and this is the first bad free throw shooting team that I have ever had; I'm not sure that I have had a team practice and shoot more than this team. There is not a lot you can do to improve free throw shooting other than practice. If you can find something else than Google it. 'How to improve free throw shooting other than practice,' I'd like to know what it is."
On finding a problem with the struggles
"In this day and age you look at other teams around the country who are struggling for whatever reason, whether it is losing three in a row â€" Michigan State has lost three in a row â€" you don't know what it is. I am around these kids 'x' amount of time per day, but I don't know what is being said to them, or what they are listening to. A lot of time you worry more about kids who have had a little bit of success. The message is a little bit different, maybe, from the outside.
I have always been a grinder. We will grind our way through this. There is not going to be any white towels coming from over here. The answer to most problems is just to work harder and stay together. That is how these things get resolved.
It doesn't matter whether you are Duke, Oklahoma, Houston, Michigan State, we have 30 plus games, unless you are a great team, you are susceptible to some losing streaks. Losing over winning, I don't ever get overexcited about wins, and I never get too low after losses. What I try to get our kids to understand is why we are winning and then if we are losing, why we are losing. We will watch this film. Obviously I know why we are losing.
Sometimes it is hard to explain it to where it becomes simple. The simple thing is that we are not shooting well, but making shots is like putting gas in a lawn mower. A lawn mower will not run unless you put gas in it. When we were making shots against SMU the other day, our defense was really good. SMU was struggling to make shots. Their defense wasn't as good, it is universal, and it is not just our team. We have had games like this. It is two straight weekends though, against Connecticut and against South Florida, where we just didn't make any shots."
On the importance of offensive rebounds
"When you're not making shots then you have to find other ways to win. That's where the offensive rebounding comes in. We didn't get those second shots. The free throw line kind of buoys you. It keeps you from sinking. You can hang in there."
On the importance of free throws
"They got to the free-throw line 26 times and made 32. The free throw percentage is usually driven by the people that are shooting the most free throws. If Dwight Howard was shooting all the free throws instead of James Harden then the Rockets free throw percentage probably wouldn't be very good. If James Harden is shooting almost all of the free throws then it's going to be a high percentage. The guy that's getting the most free throws for us is Danrad Knowles. Consequently our percentage is where it is."
"It's a fair question to ask about our free throws. We're not making free throws. You should ask about that. But I'm not smart enough to come up with any miracle cure. We have to get Danrad (Knowles) to make better free throws. We have to get him to relax more and more repetitions."
On his bench
"Bert (Nkali)'s a guy that's a good shot blocker and very athletic. Guys like Devonta Pollard and Rob Gray played great earlier in the year. We have to have those guys going, they're good players."
On how success may be impacting his team
"For this team to be a good team our best players have to play. We don't have nine great players. We don't have nine very good players. We have some great role players and some guys that are pretty good. I know they're trying but the problem is when you have success everybody treats you different. You have to be able to block out the noise. It's like white noise. There's a focus factor that comes with this and an understanding of how you got to the point where you've had a little success and then don't change things. Stay the course, keep that car right between the lines. I still believe we have a good team but we weren't very good today."
On Coach Antigua and his big win today
"I applaud and I congratulate Coach Antigua for what his team accomplished today. I cannot imagine how elated he is. I remember feeling that last year when we were struggling and we had a big road win at Tulane. It's a tremendous feeling. But on the other hand it's also very disappointing that we didn't do a better job coming out and competing harder. But again, the coach has got to do better."
HOUSTON SOPHMORE GUARD Wes VanBeck
On his performance today
"I don't really want to talk about me too much. We didn't really play hard and we lost the game. We just have to, like Coach Sampson said, watch the film and work harder in practice. We need to practice our free throws and just play harder next game and come to play."
On how the team is going to put things together better and win the next game
"We say to stay together and we need to get back to that. I'm not sure there is a specific thing that we have to do. We just need to have trust and have faith in each other. We need to play a lot harder on the defensive end."
