University of Minnesota Athletics
Minnesota - North Dakota State Game Notes
11/13/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Minnesota 63, North Dakota State 49
Monday, Nov. 13, 2006 Williams Arena
Game Notes
• Freshman Kevin Payton started his first career game.
• Lawrence McKenzie started his first game as a Gopher and the 27th of his career.
• Spencer Tollackson scored in double figures for the first time this season and the 12th time in his career.
• Dan Coleman scored in double figures for the first time this season and the 23rd time in his career.
• McKenzie scored a career –high 20 points.
• McKenzie scored in double figures for the first in his Gopher career and the 29th time in his collegiate career.
• Minnesota is now 8-0 in season openers under Dan Monson and 90-23 all-time (including vacated games) in season openers.
• The Gophers improved to 58-8 in home non-conference games under Monson.
• Payton, McKenzie, Limar Wilson, Lawrence Westbrook, Damian Johnson, Bryce Webster and Engen Nurumbi saw their first action as Golden Gophers.
Post-Game Quotes
Minnesota Head Coach Dan Monson
Opening Statement:
“I think this whole preseason is going to be a process for this team. I said that to my staff in the offseason that if we lose to Winona State, we have to be ready to understand and so be it. We’re going to have some ups and downs this preseason, it’s the toughest preseason I have had in my eight years here and we have to be ready to have some bumps and bruises. This team is going to be evaluated based on the Big Ten schedule. I really believe this in my heart that if we wouldn’t have gotten embarrassed like we did last week we wouldn’t have won today. I think we needed that and I think it was very evident that we better today. Are we where we need to be for the Big Ten season? No, but we’re heading in the right direction. I’m really happy for our guys. They had four good days, a physical practice, four good days of defense. We just told them if they could outrebound and you can keep them under 60 points you’ll win this game.
On what he wanted to see defensively compared to the exhibition game against Winona State:
“We watched the entire game and every offensive series on Friday and defensively, we just wanted to be more aggressive. Every coach this time of year says we need to get tougher and that’s kind of a cliché, what is “toughness?” At this time of the year you’re playing against the same guys every day whether it’s your roommate or your buddy and that gets kind of tough after awhile. That’s something we really had to concentrate more on is contact and a mental toughness.”
On NDSU’s play:
“I’ve got great respect for them. This was a very important game for us. We know that they’re a quality basketball team. They’ve all played together for three years. A lot of Minnesota kids, and I know how good Ben Woodside is. I also know Kevin Payton did a good job on him today and I thought he was a big key for us. I think they’re well-coached and they play well together. I told them if you just let North Dakota State play, you’re in for a long night. That’s what we let Winona do. You’re going to have to make them have a bad night. And I thought our guys did that.”
On the point guard play:
“I thought both point guards played well tonight. I thought Limar (Wilson) did a good job. I think Kevin (Payton) is a player who’s got great length for 6’5”. He’s got a lot of athletism and I thought he was very disruptive in a lot of ways today. And I’m always on Lawrence McKenzie for his defense so I better say that I thought he came to play today.”
On playing two lines:
“That was predetermined. I was planning on playing all of them anyways, and I wanted to take some of the pressure off our players as far as what they were focused on. We had a rebounding goal and a point goal to stay in and both of the lines achieved those goals. We were trying to keep them under seven points and two offensive rebounds in a six-minute stretch."
NDSU Head Coach Tim Miles
“I thought we set basketball back 15 years in the first 15 minutes of the game and I don’t know if it got any better after that. I credit Minnesota and I blame Winona. I thought Minnesota came out and really flew around and got us hurried up. We were really quick in terms of our decisions. We had 10 turnovers in the first 10 minutes and that is not the pace you want to be on. I guess with that, in the second half we let McKenize get away from us a little bit by hitting the threes. We couldn’t slice into that six, seven point lead. Then the threes came. From a coaches perspective it was just fun to see someone make a shot. It was such an ugly basketball game and I don’t mean that the wrong way, it just was. I thought Minnesota did a great job defensively getting out and getting us hurried up.”
On defending Spencer Tollackson:
“We decided to single cover him. Last year we doubled with some different people. I thought we did ok. We got in foul trouble and only took a couple of charges making him turn it over a couple of times. He got to us a little bit but I thought the three hurt us more. I was hoping they were going to try to beat us two at a time.”
On Kevin Payton:
“I think his length did bother Ben Woodside. I think their ability to really steam roll our screen and roll action really got us stopped. I thought those two things hurt us offensively.”
On Brett Winkelman:
“Brett didn’t score a lot of points in the Big Ten games last year, he rebounded really well. It is just hard with all that length and it makes it hard for those guys to score easily inside. It didn’t shock me. I was hoping that he would score better, but six points didn’t surprise me.”
On comparing last years meeting:
“We came out thinking that the Winona loss would make this game difficult. If something like that won’t light a fire under your butt nothing will. They played that way. I credit the coaches for not letting their kids hang their heads. They came out and they wanted to fight for it.”
On NDSU’s poor shooting:
“I look at a few different ways. First of all, it is our fifth day on the road so I think our kids are tired of being on the road, but that is what happens in our situation. Second, I thought last year was easy for us because we had nothing to lose. Nobody really expected too much. This year our players thought we could win the game. Understanding how to deal with that and still play aggressively and not worry about the outcome is going to make us a successful team. We didn’t play that way tonight. The Gophers also had a lot to do with that, the way they flew around on defense.”
Junior center Spencer Tollackson
On his poor shooting in the first half:
“I could not buy a bucket. I had some good looks in the first half - I don’t know if I was nervous or what, but I couldn’t buy one. I was frustrated.”
On playing NDSU tough defensively:
“Our thing in practice all week was to keep them under 60 points and out-rebound them. We knew it was going to be a hard task after they put up 91 against Idaho and Winkelman had 32, so we knew they were going to score a lot. If we kept them under 60 and out-rebounded them we knew we would win so that’s what we tried to focus on.”
Redshirt freshman guard Kevin Payton
On Minnesota’s offensive struggles in the first half:
“The shots weren’t falling, but we didn’t care. I kept telling Spencer (Tollackson) and D.C. (Dan Coleman) inside that it didn’t matter if we missed 20 shots, the points were going to come. We just wanted to maintain our defense.”
On the mentality in practice the last few days:
“It’s been tough but fun. As you can see, it paid off. The coaches really made an emphasis on toughness and rebounding. We wanted to establish our toughness, and it worked.”
Junior guard Lawrence McKenzie
On establishing a defensive presence early in the game:
“The coaches told us to have fun on offense and make sure we get back and play defense, and that’s what we concentrated on. It maybe caused us to be a little stagnant on offense, but in the end guys stepped up and shots started falling.”
On the inside-outside game in the second half:
“We got the ball into Spencer, and he did a great job of getting fouled down there. Dan Coleman also did a great job inside, and that opened up three-point shots for our guards.”
On the team’s defensive identity:
“When shots aren’t falling, we need to be able to fall back on something. You saw that in the beginning – it was 5-4 with 13 minutes to go in the first half. Our defense is going to be our identity this year.”
