Postgame Quotes vs. James Madison – Ohio State Buckeyes
11/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
No. 16/17 Ohio State 72, James Madison 44
2K Sports Classic – Coaches vs. Cancer
Nov. 12, 2009
Value City Arena
Columbus, Ohio
Attendance: 11,356
POSTGAME QUOTES
Thad Matta, Ohio State head coach
On putting pressure on the ball
“We’re still a relatively young team. One thing I noticed was that if it didn’t go in, we went back and kept putting pressure.”
On playing North Carolina in New York
“It will be a great chance, a great opportunity. You have four Top 20 teams going to the Mecca of basketball in New York City at Madison Square Garden. When we come out of there, we’ll come out knowing a lot more about our team.”
On not running as much
“We talked going in that James Madison would try to slow the tempo and I told them that we can’t allow them to do that. You have to give them (JMU) some credit, they did a pretty decent job of getting the balls out of guy’s hands.”
On Evan Turner’s rebounds
“He’s got a great knack of finding the ball, when the shot goes up he reads the ball. We talked about his legs and getting up and getting above the rim.”
On Turner’s improvement
“I’ve seen him progress from year to year. I’ve seen the things we’ve asked him to work on, and he’s doing it. That is the sign of a great player and a great kid.”
On Dallas Lauderdale’s injury
“I think he’s coming around. To his credit, he did a good job of conditioning. The more he can do the better.”
On taking a break
“We had seven straights days of practice. I asked myself if we were going to hard. We came out a little bit sluggish out of the gate. We’ll take tomorrow off.”
David Lighty, junior guard/forward
On the close score in the first half
“Everything is on us. We can’t let teams dictate what we do. We have to stay on top of it every time we step on the court. We played bad in the first half, but we were still up nine so it was no reason to hang our heads. Our intensity picked up as the game went on and we started to get sync better.”
Dallas Lauderdale, junior forward
On the team’s competitive nature
“We never want to get complacent, or ever get to a point where we feel entitled. As a team, we love competition. It’s one of the reasons we step on the court every day.”
On his injured hand
“I felt good, and right now I’m fine. We got a win, but I know we have a long way to go to get where we want to be. We have big goals.”
Evan Turner, junior guard/forward
On defensive success and crowd participation
“Our defense intensity is really great right now. The crowd always does a great job of getting into it and pumping us up. It makes us play harder.”
On putting in the effort to be successful
“I think we’ve been working hard. The way we see it is every day is a chance to get better, a chance to improve. We’re putting in the work to be successful.”
Matt Brady, James Madison head coach
On his team’s overall performance
“Obviously Ohio State is a much better team than us and they’re going to be good this year. In the first half I really thought we did what we wanted. Our goal was to keep our turnovers under eight, keep them off of their transition game, and we wanted to keep them off the offensive boards to avoid second chances. For the first 20 minutes I thought we did that. When we couldn’t score on offense that led to our poor defense. When that happened, Ohio State got what they wanted.”
On JMU sophomore guard Devon Moore out for the game
“I think having Devon in the game would have made things more interesting. He’s a remarkable kid and we’re going to miss him this year, but I don’t think there would have been much difference in the outcome. I feel terrible for the young man. I’m disappointed he couldn’t play tonight and I’m definitely disappointed he won’t be able to play at all this year. He’s one of the classiest kids I know.”
On his freshmen
“Our young guys are going to be very good. Ohio State plays well until the very end and right now we don’t know how to do that. We’ll get there but it’s going to take a while.”
