March 7, 2011

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2011 Summit League Basketball Championships
Post-Game Quotes
Men's Semifinal - #1 Oakland vs. #5 South Dakota State
March 7, 2011

Oakland head coach Greg Kampe
"Obviously we're pleased with the win. I was very concerned about playing a team as talented as the Jackrabbits are in front of 6,000 people. We felt a good early start could take them out. We came out 25-9. They did get into it a couple times after that, but we were never really in jeopardy. I have a great basketball team that played great tonight. When we play at that level we're pretty good."

on guarding Nate Wolters and Clint Sargent
"We believe when point guards score a lot of points against us that it's a good thing. We wanted to stop Sargent. Travis Bader will never get the credit for this, but he completely shut Clint down, and I think Clint is one of the best players in the league. I'm so glad we don't ever have to see him again. He's always played well against Oakland, and I don't think Sargent had very many points until the end of the game. Bader hounded him. Every shot he took was tough. Wolters, I think you can do a lot of stuff with, but he's going to get his. He's just an unbelievably good player."

on the team's overall performance
"We won and get to play tomorrow. I think we have a very good basketball team, and we had our A game tonight."

on Drew Valentine's performance
"I don't think their focus defensively was on him, and we were able to exploit that. He got some good looks and some wide-open threes. He's roughly a 40 percent three-point shooter, so with the looks he had, he's probably going to make some."

on if his early season schedule helped
"That's what we talked about in the locker room. This isn't 22,000 at Tennessee, or 21,000 at Ohio State. This is 6,000 people."

on South Dakota State's program
"They scare me because they remind me so much of us. The first three years we were eligible for this tournament we got beat on the first night. It's hard to win here. It's a whole different environment. That big freshman (Jordan Dykstra) is a good player. That point guard (Wolters) is a good player. They're probably missing couple pieces. They just have to have patience. Everybody else has scholarships and everyone else wants to win too."

Oakland guard Drew Valentine
On his offensive performance
"I was just trying to be aggressive. I feel like I'm a bigger asset to our team when I'm aggressive offensively."

on trying to take the crowd out early
"We knew the crowd was going to be a big factor. We just wanted to come out and be aggressive offensively and defensively and get rebounds. That's a staple of our program, defense and rebounding."

Oakland guard Reggie Hamilton
on the pace of the game
"I think we did a great job with the tempo of the game. Our assist to turnover ratio was 22-4, so I think we did a great job handling the pace."

South Dakota State head coach Scott Nagy
"Basketball is a game of match-ups. We match up great with IPFW. We don't match up well at all with Oakland. Height-wise and physically, we don't match up well. Those holes were exposed well. We just gave up so many shots early that we couldn't catch up."

on what they did differently this time against Oakland, besides pressing the ball
"That's really it. Then we pulled that off. They're just too fast, too athletic. They shot 66 percent in the second half. We shot 51 percent. Part of that is communication. We weren't a great communicating team all year. We're a quiet bunch. Defense is about communication. When the defense is in front of our bench they're a better defensive team. In the second half, when they're not in front of our bench, we don't play defense as well. When I look at next year's team, we got some kids that can score. We got Nate coming back, Jordan coming back, Chad coming back. But what's got to happen is these good offensive players have to come back and decide they want to play defense.We're not super athletic. Oakland is. Oklahoma is serious. Their program is serious. The other programs, if you want to win championships in this league, you better be serious about it. This is the season that put South Dakota State back on the map. This team, maybe more than any team I've ever coached, gave me hope. They had fun. I know it was fun for the fans to watch them. It's not just about fun, but it does help the countenance of the team. It can't be all drudgery."

on the desire to reach the next level of competitiveness in this league
"We're serious about it. Everything's tied to recruiting. Of course, our recruiting is a lot different than Oakland. Draw a 100-mile radius from Oakland. We've got to get bigger and more athletic. We will get there. We're already getting there. Oakland is tremendous and we don't match up with them at all. We scored 90 points tonight and we got beat by 20. That's hard for me to shallow because that's not who I want us to be." on Valentine "He hasn't been playing well offensively. We had (Dale) Moss on (Richard) Hamilton and he (Valentine) got off to fast start. Once he got going... He's a good player. He's kind of their glue guy."

South Dakota State guard Nate Wolters:
on being down 25-9 at start
"Definitely wasn't the start we're looking for. Frustrating. We never really gave ourselves a chance. We still scored on them, but we just couldn't stop them. Pretty frustrating."

on how frustrating it was to try to battle back
"When you don't get stops, it's almost impossible to come back. We had a couple pushes to get it to 13, but then they'd hit a three."

on Oakland
"Everyone can score out there. There really is no weak spot."

South Dakota State forward Jordan Dykstra
"You want to make it closer than 20. We didn't match up size wise but that's not an excuse. We didn't rebound when we went to the zone defense."

on the team's improvement
"We went 14-16 last year, 19-12 this year. I feel like we have a good future ahead of us."