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Postgame Quotes: Houston 71, ACU 59
12/6/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
HEAD COACH KELVIN SAMPSON
Opening Statement
"I was sitting around today, and I was watching a school called New Jersey Institute of Technology against a top 10 school in the nation. They win at Michigan. Wisconsin-Green Bay wins at Miami, who is ranked No. 18 in the country. South Carolina Upstate wins at Georgia Tech. North Florida wins at Purdue. So you know what I was thinking when I saw those? This is going to be a tougher game than people think. That team is scrappy. My hats off to their coaching staff for having their kids ready to play."
On the team's depth
"We're a very imperfect team, obviously. We don't have a lot of depth. Hopefully next week when we play we'll get Mikhail McLean, who has a broken foot, we think we're going to get him back. L.J. Rose, also with a broken foot, we think we're going to get him back. So that will help our depth."
On junior guard Jherrod Stiggers and junior forward Devonta Pollard today
"Jherrod Stiggers had his best game of the year. Devonta Pollard had his best scoring game of the year. We had some guys who were in the witness protection program. We couldn't find them tonight. The guys who played, played hard. The other team scrapped and clawed and you have to give the other team credit."
On the team's energy
"It was very disappointing especially on something we emphasize. That's when I knew I had to start searching early. When you have guys not playing with energy you go to the bench. I put Egi Gjikondi in there. I put Danrad Knowles back in took Knowles out. Put JC Washington in, he had okay energy, took him out. I was searching. You find out who you can go to. In the last six or seven minutes, I don't think I substituted. It was one of those nights where you're fishing, and casting, and re-baiting, and throwing it out there trying to find something that works."
"I'm glad we won. Whoever thought Yale was going to win at Connecticut. I'm glad we won. We've won three in a row. We've got finals coming up. This time of year is always a little dangerous with finals coming up. Our next game is next Tuesday. We've got a lot of work to do. You hit the nail on the head with the energy. With a team like ours, we're a little fragile. They need some success early. There is no excuse for a team like ours for not rebounding harder. That's my responsibility, we've got to do a better job in that area."
On if there is anything he needs to work on before the game and during finals
"Every coach has this every year. I have done this for 26 years, and it is always the same. We'll give them tomorrow completely off, and we'll give them Monday completely off. I have everybody's finals schedule, so we may have to work practicing at odd times because of when finals are. Some guys have finals at eight, ten, twelve, two, and four. Some of them have them at night, so we'll have to pick and choose the times."
"Every school in the country is doing this. We practice every day at 3 p.m., this week and we may be able to get a couple or as many as six guys together for practice, and then maybe some other ones a little bit later on, so we're just going to have to mix and match it."
HOUSTON JUNIOR FORWARD Devonta Pollard
On the team looking sluggish
"We just got out-hustled tonight. Coach made that emphasis clear to us in shoot around. He said that, that team was a very scrappy team, so they were going to come ready to play. They had just come off a big win, so they were going to come ready to play against us.
They were going to be very scrappy. We just didn't have that scrappy mindset in the first half. We really didn't have that scrappy mindset the whole game. We just found a way in the last three minutes to pull out a win."
On the team's offensive rebounding struggles
"Those areas of the game are basically just about our mindset. Nobody came in the game with the mindset of offensive rebounding, or rebounding period, because we got outrebounded 40 to 38. At half time we had one offensive rebound. We just didn't come with the mindset of we're going to beat these guys on the boards: we're going to punish them on the glass.'"
On if they underestimated the opponent or it was an off-day
"It was a case of underestimating them. As we walked out on the court we saw how small they were; how little they were. We thought this team wasn't going to be very scrappy with us. But, at the end of the day they came out and hit us first, and we didn't know how to react to it.
"We started fighting back a little bit. We started getting aggressive on defense and rebounding in areas like that. Then again throughout the game we came back down like when we first started the game. So, that's just something we have to get better at as a team."
