Nov. 9, 2010

Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery

Head Coach Greg Kampe
Opening Statement...
"It's good to be playing basketball again. It's good to be playing against somebody who's not your own teammate. We were happy to get out there and play. We kind of knew what we were getting into with the competition. But, it was a night where we wanted to get a lot of people in and we were able to that. We'd already had a scrimmage against a school, and so now we wanted something that we could get up and down the floor and have some fun with. On Friday we go into the lion's den so we'll see what happens."

On the crowd...
"There were a lot of people there for an exhibition game. Obviously it's the biggest exhibition crowd we've ever had. I talked the team about it at the half; that with success come expectation and things like this happen. We talked about how our student crowd has become one of the better mid-major student crowds in the country. I am not sure a lot of people in a lot of places show up like they showed up tonight, for a game like this. Now I will say this, we don't play at home until December, so I am sure they're anxious to keep going. I feel bad that we have to wait here for a month before they can see some action. That will change next year. This schedule will flip-flop next year we will play a ton of home games."

On starting lineup...
"We're going to have to go that route. I think that with our size we're can to do that. We have tremendous size across the front. We're going to rotate those six kids in and we're going to be able to put a lot of pressure on people and wear teams down. You saw Marygrove doing some things in the second half that weren't real pretty. I think that a lot of that had to do with, yes, we're a much better team than they are, but also we exhausted them, we got them extremely tired and wore them down. With fatigue comes mistakes, they started handing us the ball a few times. That's a strength. We have a lot of players and a lot of good players we can rotate them in and out and I think you saw that tonight."

On perimeter shooting (coach said that 3-point shooting should be improved this season)...
"I didn't think we showed that we have a lot of guys who can shoot it, I think we showed that we have a lot of guys who think they can shoot it. We were a little trigger-happy early in the game. But that's why you play a game like this, to get over those nerves of putting a uniform on the first time. We let the ball go too quickly in the first seven-to-10 minutes of the game. Then once we got [Keith] Benson and [Will] Hudson involved then the shots started opening up and we'd take them. We shot 40-percent from the 3 tonight, I think you'll see us do that a lot. We shot 32-percent from the 3 last year and that was our Achilles-heel. If you look at that team last year versus the current basketball team, that was the one weakness we had, was that there were nights when we couldn't make anything. Even though we found ways to win very seldom was it by the jump shot. If we are smart enough to understand that we play through Benson, we'll shoot well this season. We shot 27 3s tonight and there's going to be a lot of nights when we do that. If we can make 40-percent like this then it's going to be a very successful season."

On the effort of the freshman especially Travis Bader...
"I think [Travis] Bader has a chance to be a really good player. He's worked extremely hard. He's grown an inch since he got here, he's a redshirt freshman. He came here at 161 pounds and he's 181 pounds now. He did some things tonight that Kangas couldn't do until he was a junior or senior so we're pretty excited about that. He plays that Kangas role for us. Tonight he put the ball on the floor and made a couple of moves and jumped over people, we never saw Kangas do that until his senior year so we're excited about that. In that same breath, he's not anywhere near Kangas yet, but where Kangas was as a freshman versus where he's at as a freshman I think maybe he's a little bit ahead. Travis is going to be important for us. When [Blake] Cushingberry went down [with an injury] now he's the guy who has to come up and play. If Cushingberry hadn't gotten hurt, we were going to bring Travis along very slowly, but we can't afford to do that now. He's going to have to play and he's going to have to play major minutes. There are going be nights when we need him to score for us to win."

On WVU and how they play...
"One of the things I was most excited about is that, after losing the all-time assist leader in the history of Oakland University and The Summit League [Jonathan Jones], we had 29 assists on our 38 baskets tonight and Larry Wright had seven assists and one turnover, so that was exciting. Obviously, the level of competition is going to be different, and like I always say when we play these teams, 'These teams will expose us.' When we walk off that court Friday night we will know what we've got to do to get better. We know they're going to come after us, we know they're going to beat the crap out of Keith [Benson]. So we've got to keep the floor spread, we've got to keep the ball moving and we're going to have to make shots to win. One of the biggest things is that we're going to have to rebound. That's been a strength of ours for the last three-or-four years, we've been a great rebounding team. It was 54-26 tonight. So if we can rebound with West Virginia we'll be in it."

Will Ryan Bass redshirt?...
"We can't redshirt [Ryan] Bass. He's got to play. He's really good. Right now he's hurt. He wanted to go tonight because he is excited and wanted to play, but he played about four minutes. Just from the couple of times he exploded to the basket, you could see that this kid's good. We've got to get him healthy and get him back. These games are very important for Ryan Bass. He needs to play against the Purdues and the Michigan States and the world, so that he's battle-tested and ready when we get into league-play. He and [Travis] Bader are both going to play an important role on this team. I don't know about[Corey] Petros yet. He looks to good to redshirt. I know how good he could be in five years, but this team has a chance to be special so we have to do what we can to win right now."

Reggie Hamilton
On how he played in first game as an OU player...
"There's definitely room for improvement. I was happy to be back on there on the court, but there's definitely room for improvement in my game."

On switching guards on both offense and defense...
"It's something that all the guards on our team are capable of doing. We stress that a lot at practice defending for 94 feet. We have guards were any guard can fill any spot."

On preparation for road stretch...
"Oh yeah, I am most definitely ready. I think this was a good game. I was more calmed down and I'm ready to go."

Ledrick Eackles
On new role as starter vs bench...
"We have a deep bench this year. I am sure coach talked about how we worked on it all year and all during the summer, so that I can go out and play with that same intensity every time on the court and coach can bring in a sub then I am ready to go back whenever he's ready to put me back in."

On the three guard rotation...
"Like Reggie said, we're interchangeable. We are comfortable at any position. You have to know all the roles on the court. If you're a point guard, shooting guard or small forward, it's our job to know what everybody is capable of and what their role is on the team."