Dec. 5, 2015 Recap | Notes | Photo Gallery
Minnesota Head Coach Richard Pitino
Opening statement:
"We were concerned heading into this game. Just from the high of Clemson we knew we had to get back to work and get re-focused because we can lose on any given night, that's the way college basketball works. It's a disappointing one, we've got to find a way to really learn from it because we've got a good South Dakota State team coming in on Tuesday and then we've got to go play Oklahoma State."
On Jordan Murphy's play:
"He's a good player. You saw him make a lot of effort plays. 17 rebounds as a freshman is pretty good. He played 30 minutes, you need to get him some breaks but he needs to be on the court as well."
On play after Clemson game:
"Coming back we were just sluggish. I was concerned about it. You have to give South Dakota all of the credit. They played great, we did not."
On Murphy fouling out:
"That hurt us big time. We tried to save him a little bit. Murph was really good. That hurt us and him fouling out hurt us. Again, you have to give them (South Dakota) credit. They made a lot of big plays, we did not."
On overall team offense:
"I don't think we are a great shooting team. That's a concern of mine. I think we were getting a little bit locked up into the post, with switches. Spacing wasn't great, we weren't just reversing the ball and attacking. Give them (South Dakota) credit, they deserved it."
On his message to the team after the game:
"We just talked about preparation leading up to games. It'll get you. I was concerned, you're always concerned about these kinds of games. Good coaching, good players, Craig did a great job. You've got to teach them and then you've got to move on. Just continue to chop away, teach and learn from it."
Freshman Jordan Murphy
On the team's overall energy during overtime: "Once we got to overtime we were feeling more confident and had more energy. We had a little pep to our step."
On playing a team like South Dakota:
"We should really be coming out with a lot of energy every game. That didn't happen today. Starting out that sluggish is never a good thing.
On the other team's ability to score inside tonight:
"The drive that they were doing (is what helped them). We didn't close as many gaps as we should have."
On going through a non-conference loss like this at home:
"For the new guys it will be tough but we just have to come in tomorrow and be ready to work. We have a tough team, South Dakota State, coming in on Tuesday and we have to be ready for them. We have to prepare and try to get better each and every day."
On a sluggish practice the other day:
"I feel like it carried over into the game today. We started out sluggish in the first half. I think this is teaching us a lesson that we can get beat by anybody. Hopefully we come out next game with better energy and better intensity."
On the energy throughout the game:
"We had a bad game in regular time. I felt like we were going to pick it up in overtime, which we did. Just a couple bad shots and a couple mistakes messed it up."
"It is always a good sign seeing a freshman step up like that. Hopefully that shows everyone what he is capable of. I feel like he is going to help us big time."
South Dakota Head Coach Craig Smith
On beating a Big Ten school on their own court... "It's history for the University of South Dakota. First of all, Coach Pitino is a good friend of mine. Ben Johnson and I worked together at Nebraska, and for them to allow us to play them is huge for our guys. We got four Minnesota guys in our program. We recruit Minneapolis very hard. We have a huge donor base in Minneapolis. We had a great event last night, and it's history. Duke's got the longest non-conference winning streak in the country. University of Minnesota had the second, with 47, and they're just so hard to beat in the Barn. Being a Minnesota guy, growing up, I've watched games here forever, and it's so hard to win here. Our kids just played with great poise, great composure, and had tremendous toughness. The way regulation ended, where Murphy basically got the tip-in at the buzzer, a lot of teams would have folded right there, and they responded. We kind of started overtime a little slow, but what resiliency."
On what was working for University of South Dakota tonight...
"It was different throughout the game. Early on, it was a lot of screen and roll stuff where we kind of started going. Our style of play, it's different than a lot of teams. We try to say our style's the winning style, so if that means it's 62-60 or 92-8 and 90. Especially as the game went on, we went small ball. We played DJ Davis as our forward. We just went to our emotion offense. We were just really cutting hard and were really unselfish. Going into tonight, our team was ranked 32nd in the country in assists, and we really and we end up with 22 assists again tonight, so that's four out of five games where we've been over 20 assists, which is hard to do."
