Nov. 21, 2009

Recap | Box Score | Notes

Oakland University Head Coach Greg Kampe

Opening Statement
"I think since we've gone Division I, it's hard for me to remember our Division II days of playing Garth Pleasant's team, but this is the best team he's had since making that jump to Division I and we've played them multiple times. I like this team; I think they're good and Adrian Schaffer is a good player. They made shots in the first half and we were putting pressure all over the place. Our press is structured around out four-man, putting pressure on the ball and hoping they throw the ball to the four-man when bringing it up the floor. This game, they were all guards, so that didn't work very well. We got out of that, still tried to pressure them and they made shots, so we took the pressure off and went into a half court defense. I think that's a real feather in their cap that they can come in here and do that. It was a just a a matter of wearing them down. We got the ball inside and they couldn't stay with us on the block. We got a lot of easy baskets where we needed to get them."

On getting a home win before a tough road trip
"I don't worry about our record, that takes care of itself. We just work on getting better and our goal is to play in the NCAA tournament. We have to play 31 games and this one happened to be the next one on the schedule and we prepared for it. Like right now, Tennessee Tech is next and we're going to prepare for them."

On whether it was part of the game plan for Johnathon Jones to not shoot as much
"If that was the game plan, then I'm not very smart. No, that's just the way it happened. They're little, we're big so it made sense to just throw it inside. We went to our dribble drive in the second half and I thought JJ did a great job of getting to the basket and kicking it out. Because he was penetrating, Derick Nelson had drives to the basket."

On the performances of Will Hudson and Larry Wright
"For Will, they're little and we're big, so he got a lot of rebounds and that was probably the most freethrows he has ever shot. For Larry, it's a matter of time. He averaged 10 points a game in the Big East and it's not easy to sit out a year and not play. It takes time to pick up where you left off two years ago. It takes getting yelled at, making mistakes and getting through bad times. We've had transfers who have played really well in the beginning and go into a funk, so I am happy he is doing it at the beginning of the year. By the time we go into the postseason, there you go."

On the performance of Drew Maynard
"We've been on Drew for not playing defense, and it's not very good and it's got to get better. I believe that, as kind of an old-fashioned guy, if your butt's on the bench, maybe your butt will tell your head that, 'I need to play defense so I'm not on the bench.' That's what we've done with him. We also won 23 games with him last year. We went to our dribble drive and he's much better in that offense than the one with the two bigs because we're trying to play him at the four, whereas we played him in the three last year. We're so after talented in our first three spots and then you have Blake Cushingberry, Ledrick Eackles and Drew Valentine that if you try to put Maynard in there too, it screws it up. What we've been trying to do is when Maynard goes into the game, we go away from the base offense and use the dribble drive to spread the floor and move him behind everybody so we can kick it out to him. Of course there was one time he felt he had to shoot three steps from half court rather than the three-point line, but we'll get that fixed."

Rochester College Head Coach Garth Pleasant

Opening Statement
"I really appreciate Oakland giving us the game, You know, I asked our kids what we write on the board, I normally have offensive and defensive goals and keys to the games, things like that. I asked our them today, I wrote the word compete, I really wanted them to compete, and I really thought they competed. We got beat by a really good team, a team a lot better than we are and I'm not taking anything away from our kids but there are some things that we would like to do better, but Oakland probably caused us not to do those things. I thought we ran our offense, I thought we got some good looks, obviously we didn't do what we wanted to do inside and we played with our hands more than our feet."

On using zone defense against Oakland
"Two things, we knew we really couldn't match up with them inside so we played what we call our rotation zone where we want four guys in the paint at all times and one guy on the ball. I knew that even though they haven't shot well I knew we would probably make them healthy, that's the way it goes. Our kids played hard but they don't defend like Wisconsin, we play as hard as they do, so I knew they would shoot. But I thought they did a good job with our zone, kept us off balance, got us out of our tandem in front. The kids wanted to play man-to-man so that's what we normally played. We actually went to man-to-man in the first half and we came out in the second half and got it to within eight I think. It was to try to neutralize the inside game and you pick your poison and beat us from the perimeter; they beat us from everywhere though."

On Adrian Schaffer's performance
"You know Adrian is from Adams and he can really score the ball. This is Adrian's first game back, he has missed five games for us. I don't know if you are aware of this but we played last Friday and Saturday in Cleveland, Monday we played the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay at Kent State, Tuesday we went and played at Hope, Wednesday we played at Saginaw Valley, and we are here today and we get on the bus tomorrow to go play Kent State. So, Adrian has missed our last five games, but he can score the ball in bunches and we try to run some things to get him some shots. When he stays with our offense I think he gets some good looks."