Post-Game Coach and Player Quotes

MEMPHIS HEAD COACH JOHN CALIPARI SECOND ROUND QUOTES

On upcoming game against Texas A&M

“It’s one of the greatest turnounds that I have seen in the last 20 years. He (Texas A&M head coach Billy Gillispie)had a plan going in and he went with that plan. He recruited the type of players that he feels comfortable coaching. He made a couple of the guys change once they were there. He changed the culture, and I am so impressed from a distance watching what he is doing. They play offense now too. A lot of dumps come off the defense. They run good stuff. I’ll be honest; I have only seen them a couple of times this year. I am going to watch this tape tonight on the planehome. I will watch some Texas A&M tape, maybe tonight. But I have my family with me so I am just going to enjoy this. When our leading scorer goes down, and we come together like that. For a coach, it gets kind of emotional. I went with
the two freshmen and they got all shaky in there. I expect when we play in San Antonio that you’ll do well. Let me tell you what I did at half time. I told Willie (Kemp) and Andre (Allen) in the lockerroom, ‘I am going to go with Andre because I want to make sure that his energy is high. And then I want to make sure Willie comes off the bench. That’s what we working here, and that why we are what we are.”

On the play of Robert Dozier

“When he plays that way, we are pretty good. We are like pretty, pretty good. He gets you one more guy with size who can score- who can blocks shots. He rebounded every tough rebound today. He made tough layups today. He’s a great kid. Like he said, he’s just trying to do what he can to win. Let me read you a line. Antonio Anderson 10 rebounds, 14 points, four assists and a steal. What? Who is that guy? We are not even talking about him. And then Joey does what he does. He rebounded balls; he had nine rebounds. He was 4-for-6 from the line. What we will do tonight on the plane is we will all shoot 20 free throws and hopefully we are up to 16 or 17.”

On the condition of Chris Douglas-Roberts

“It is mild to moderate. I told him to rub some dirt on it you are playing on Thursday son. We don’t know. If he can’t go he can’t go. In that kind of game you can’t be what 70%? We don’t know yet. We’ve got some time until Thursday. Will
they move the game to Friday? No. I don’t think so.”

On playing in San Antonio, Texas

“Billy will probably say there is no home court advantage here. I am fine with that we are still playing. You are talking about two pretty good teams. I wish it was in our state but its not. Our fans here were a big advantage over Nevada’s fans. We must have had 5 or 7,000. Texas A&M will have the advantage. I would predict in San Antonio that we would have 4 to 5,000 Memphis fans.”

On successful defense against Nevada

“With a short turnaround there were two things that we tried to do. Whenever he screened, we rotated another guy to guard him. We tried to take away two or three things from their offense. We tried to keep the pressure on. Let’s get the ball out of (Ramon) Sessions hands. Make the other guys handle the ball. You can’t do much with a 24 hour time period. The only thing I told the players that they needed to unleash. We unleashed but we missed a bunch of layups. But we played. And that’s what we have to do. We can’t think too much. You can’t unleash if you think too much. We tried to take two or three things away from there offense. Make things hard for them.”

Memphis Second-Round Post-Game Quotes

Sophomore Center Antonio Anderson

On the team:
“ We are a deep team. When guys get their chance to play, they make the best of it and that is why we do what we do.”

On the defensive adjustment on Marcelus Kemp:

“The three that he made, they were tough shots. We didn’t do what we were supposed to do. We were suppose to try to force him to drive ball, and we didn’t do that, so he got two open looks and knocked them down. After that we got up on him and tried to make him pass the ball.”

On the team’s defense:

“That is what we preach on in practice. We knew if we were going to go anywhere in this tournament it starts on defense. The guys are committed to that. Everyone worried about defense. That is Coach’s main subject everyday and we just stick with it and when you have five guys on the court that love to play defense you are going to make some stops.”

On Texas A&M:

“We don’t know anything. We leave that up to the coaches. They do a pretty good job of getting us ready for who we play next. We will worry about that when he calls us for our meeting and tells us when it is time for us to start thinking about it.”

Sophomore Forward Robert Dozier

On his role on the team:

“That is my job on the team. I just try to go out and do it. On defense, block shots and get a couple of steals, and then score when I can on offense. I am just playing my role.”

On playing against Nick Fazekas:

“He is a tough challenge and a great player. I just tried to beat him at every spot. I just tried to block his shots and it worked a little bit in the first half.”

Senior Guard Jeremy Hunt

On today’s win:

“We knew we had to do it on the defensive end first. We had to do all as a team. There wasn’t just one player out there trying to do it on their own on offense, we do it as a team. We made free throws at the end, we make them at the end when it really counts.”

On making it to the Sweet 16:

“It is a great feeling. We have had a successful season. We are 32-3, how much can you say about that, and now that we have made it to the Sweet 16 and that I am part of it, I am speechless.”

NEVADA STUDENT-ATHLETE POST GAME QUOTES

Nevada forward Nick Fazekas

On defining moment late in game:

That is a shot I make 9 out of 10 times and that could have changed the whole game because that would have changed the momentum and the game would have been tied and there was still quite a bit of time left. That’s just how the night went. Then
Marcelus got called for the foul and that changed the momentum because they got to go down and shoot free throws. If my shot would of went in there is no telling what could have happened.

On last seven minutes of game:

We had trouble guarding them the last seven minutes. We were forced to foul and maybe we ran out of gas- I don’t know. We were playing as hard as we could and that’s just how it ended. We got beat.