Jan. 12, 2001
Head Coach Mike Montgomery Opening Statement:
Well that was what we expected. We tried to caution the kids that Oregon State could really control tempo and not run the break and walk it up and they did that. They did an excellent job and I think you have to give Oregon State credit, that's a difficult tempo to play and they play it very well and very comfortably.
In the second half, we played much better, but we weren't really as ready to play as we need to be and I think the kids have to understand that. We cautioned them, but with all the stuff this week it's been a little difficult. If you look at Oregon State's lineup, they have good players - they don't have much depth, but [Jason] Heide's a load inside and they shot the ball from three and [Brian] Jackson's an excellent player and [Deaundra] Tanner at the point. We just got lulled a little bit, got impatient offensively and defensively.
The first half wasn't so pretty, we tried to get a little more aggressive second half and tried to establish at the post more, and I though we did that, which made our outside game a little better. Julius [Barnes] gave us a lift off the bench, he came in and made some plays, which really made a difference for us and then the post were better in the second half. We just have to understand the differences between teams is very small and this tempo that Oregon State plays is going to cause people some problems. Slow tempo causes us problems, we've had problems once before. We just have to get used to it and adjust to a lot of different styles because every team is going to give you a little different look and a different problem.
Q. Was this a breakout game for Julius?
A. There's no such thing as a breakout game. Julius is a capable player and he played very well and he needs to be consistent with being a good player. I'd be happy to have him play that way each and every game.
Q. What do you think he did particularly well tonight?
A. He made shots. Any time you make shots you look good. If those threes he takes do not go in, then all of a sudden it's not so good. The game is about making plays, it's a skill game and you have to make plays. We were a little bit stagnant and Julius had a bit of rhythm. The shots he was taking were going down, that's why you have a team. You hope that everybody is going to be ready to play every night, but not everybody's going to have a great game every night. You just keep trying to find somebody that's going to help you and make some plays.
Q. Coming off his injury, did you expect Curtis [Borchardt] to play as much as he did?
A. Yes, his injury was not a reset of a bone - it was pain. He's fine. It didn't show anything, I didn't really think about it much at all.
Q. What did you say to the team at halftime?
A. I said that we needed to get more aggressive. We were standing back and allowing them to control tempo by letting them run their stuff and run their cuts. We shouldn't be allowing them to do that. I said basically that they were playing harder than we were. They outplayed us on the boards. They had six offensive rebounds, they had out-rebounded us by one. There were a lot of telltale signs that we weren't doing very much very well. The players knew that and we tried to get a little more aggressive and make them have to make plays a little bit, get up into them a little more and try to run our offense a little bit better. It wasn't like they were taking us out of our offense, it wasn't like we couldn't get a shot when we wanted to get a shot. It was just that we were impatient and didn't run the offense very well.
Q. Were you using the press in the beginning of the second half?
A. Yes, that's an age-old trick. You start games in pressure because they know that if they have to press, they have to be ready to play and they have to expend energy. The players had said why don't we try [it] to get us moving a little bit and maybe that paid a dividend rather than back our heels.
Q. Who made that suggestion?
A. [Tony] Giovacchini.