Feb. 18, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 
Oakland Head Coach Greg Kampe
Opening Statement
"That game was an interesting game. We didn't guard very well early in the game and Garrett Callahan was on fire. We took Johnathon Jones off Cliff Sargent and put him on Garrett Callahan. You can see the results and he did an outstanding job. He scored no points in the second half. We came out really well in the second half. Similar to the first half, they got 21 points in the first seven minutes, then we guarded them. We substituted and the kids that came off the bench did a great job. The game got into an offensive flow for both teams, up and down, and at times, it was like a game of Horse. As I have said before, it's a long season and throughout the course of it, you have to know how to win games in every way you can win them. Tonight, we won because of our offense. Our defense had carried us all year and tonight, it wasn't very good. We got big stops when we needed them, but our offense carries us. We have Jones, a senior who wants to win a championship, and he took it upon himself. He did it Saturday at UMKC and he did it again today. We got in trouble down the stretch and he said, not here, not tonight. He took the game over."
On if there is somewhere in the beginning of games where they struggle
"I just think it is a long season. That was game 29 and there is only so many times you can tell the guys, "Let's go! It's a big game!" If we only played 7-8 games, they'd be sky-high for all of them. If you're a coach that does that, you're going to be in trouble. You have to keep an even keel. You've heard me say a million times that consistency is the hallmark of greatness. That's what we try to do. We try to stay consistent and get the same level of effort and that's hard to do. We didn't have a high level of effort in the beginning of the game and they came out and made shots on us. I substituted the kids that don't get to start and they went in there and crawled into them so they couldn't get any shots. That got us back in the game. We stopped scoring for a while, so then they came back and tied it. It's college basketball and the key is to peak in February and play your best basketball in March. We haven't lost in February since 2008, so obviously we are doing what we want to do. I would like to see us play with a higher intensity level than we did tonight, but we were phenomenal on the road: we had so much intensity. We want more, but sometimes you can't squeeze blood out of a rock."
On Derick Nelson's play with a lingering injury
"I wanted to try and take him out, but he wanted to go in. He's only got a few games left and I'm not going to not play him. I think it affected the way he played defensively because he seemed to step slow. He gets down on himself and he's a kid that needs a lot of love. I think when you're hurt and trying to play through things, you are going to make mistakes. I've got do a better job of limiting his minutes these last two games and get him healthy."
On whether he thinks ahead with matchups
"We have that for every team in the league. We have things that we save we'll use in March at Sioux Falls that we have not used yet all season. We have some things we were going use tonight and even when we got in trouble, we didn't use them because we want to save them for the tournament. We all know that's the one that counts. They are a really good team and this league has four outstanding teams. Those semi-finals, if we get there, will be the best one in the ten years we've been Division I
On finishing out the end of the season
"We have a lot to play for still. I was taught to share in kindergarten and I don't like to share. We want to win Saturday, so we haven't cut the nets down yet. We want to be the number one seed. We've wrapped up the postseason and at the very worst, we'll be in the NIT. But we have a TV game Saturday and it's going to be a full house. We're playing for a championship Saturday and we're excited for it. We talk about consistency and Johnathon Jones is four games away from being the winningsest player in Oakland history. His four-year career has been something here and with only two left at home, people need to come and watch him because we're really going to miss him when he leaves.
Junior forward Will Hudson
On coming off the bench
"I'm pretty comfortable coming off the bench and I am willing to adapt to the new role. I'm up for the challenge."
On how SDSU's doubling up on Keith Benson helped him
"It helps a lot. It is a lot easier to find the gaps. You take advantage of that every time somebody is doubled up on."
Senior guard Johnathon Jones
On defending Callahan
"I was just trying to deny him the ball and limit his touches because he is a very good player. If he gets an open look, he is going to knock it down. I have to credit the other players around me though for playing pressure defense."
On finding ways to pull out wins
"The core group of guys here has been around long enough and we have been through the tough losses. We try to limit the mistakes we made in the past and take advantage of what we have. We have players that can score inside out, so we know what we need to do. Like Coach said, we won with our offense tonight, but we have to get back to our defense."
On feeling a sense of urgency
"I just try to take what I have during the game and take advantage of it. I don't try to force anything and plan my attack."
SDSU Head Coach Scott Nagy
Opening Statement
"I thought our effort was good. We played well enough offensively to win the game. We have been trying to focus on being a pretty good team to being a championship team and the details are the difference in that. There are probably 10 plays I can show our guys in terms of details that would have changed the game for us. The effort is there and as a coach that is the first thing you need to get and its there. They're too big, too fast and too athletic for us not to take care of the details."
On second half adjustments by Oakland on Garrett Callahan
"With Garrett, we have had to hold him out of practice for the most part because he has some back problems-- a cracked vertebra. We have done just about everything that we can do for it. So in the first half he did well, not to say that didn't do a good job defensively, but when you sit 15 minutes then try to come back out and play you don't have any lift. I'm not trying to make excuses for him, he is a good player. When they want to shut someone down they put Johnathon Jones on them and in the second half they put Jones on him. And for Garrett that is one of his problems right now.
On the changing point in the second half
"It was the start of the half. We probably have our best offensive player miss a wide-open layup and no one blocks out. So right there it goes from a two point game to a six or eight point game like that. Then for the rest of the time we are battling back so the turning point for me was right at the start of the second half. We battled back, they stretched it out, then we battled back, but if we started off the second half better and make layups and you talk about details, I mean on the road against a team like this, you can't do that."
On how close they are overall to beating better teams
"Talent wise, they got better players, bigger more athletic, but we are getting better trust me, we are getting there. We will be there. I think our players mentally have gotten over the hump, it took a few years but we have gone from a not-so-good team to a pretty good team. There is nobody whipping us anymore. We got pretty good fight and our kids know how to win games finally and those kinds of things. That's a big part of it and they believe going into a game that they can win. They wouldn't have played the way they did tonight if they didn't believe they could win. They had to believe those things and that was a big hurdle for us to get over. I think we are over that. I think we know that we can beat anybody. I think the difference for us is that, Oakland can play poorly and still win and we can't do that. There's just no way. We are not good enough talent wise to do that and our guys know that. It won't be long, we will be there. We have more talent than we had last year, we are stronger at the point guard position and that helps a lot and we returned all those guys with experience which helps. It took us a year to get over that hump of wondering if we can play and we have won every single game thinking we can win and that's a big part."
On changing the starting lineup
"That was, when we talk about details, that was a couple of guys not taking care of the details off the floor. So I had to make a switch. That's the kind of stuff we are talking about is the details on the floor and details off the floor, all that stuff is important. You can't separate who you are on the floor from who you are off the floor and so we are just trying to clean some of that stuff up. I mean, it was nothing huge, if it was huge those people wouldn't have played. It's just small things, but the small things are the big things."
Forward Kai Williams
On how these games set up for the tournament
"First off they set us up for seeding to get the best possible seed for the conference tournament. I mean every game we play in conference sets us up and prepares us for the conference tournament. So these last games are big and to prepare us to play in a good rhythm and flow for the conference tournament"
Garrett Callahan
On second half-adjustments by Oakland
"They switched it up, stuck to me, played good defense. I didn't get open as often, that's about it Playing Oakland hard in both games this season It's just the little things. We played them well so we know we can beat them. It's just the little things like coach said. And just watching film the next few days and cleaning those things up. We will play with confidence down the stretch don't worry."
