|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2009Kodi AugustusRick StansburyBarry StewartJarvis VarnadoTAMPA, FLORIDA Mississippi State – 79 CLAUDE FELTON: Opening thoughts from Coach Stansbury? RICK STANSBURY: Well, number one, give Coach Herrmann a lot of credit for what he's done with this Georgia basketball team since taking it over. He stepped into a very difficult situation. I think they were 0-9 at the time. Found a way in his last 7 games to go 3 and 4, beat Florida, beat Vanderbilt, and go to Kentucky and win. That's not easy. So give Coach Herrmann a lot of credit. He had his team playing very well coming into this. Proud of our kids' effort. What I'm proud of is not just the win, but the way we got it. I thought our kids dug in defensively. At halftime Woodbury had two points and he's the key to them. When he scores points for them, you look back at the games they've won, and he's been the guy that's gotten them going. Barry Stewart did a terrific job on him. We put a smaller guy on on on him and put our bigger guy on a smaller guy. But Barry, because of his ability to anticipate, kept him out of that lane. That was a huge, huge thing in this game. Jarvis got every rebound, came off the board early in the game. I think the X-factor was our bench. I thought we had some guys that came off that bench. We've had it coming into this SEC. Our bench playing extremely well for us. And the guy at the end no question has come in and played extremely well for us. Makes a difference coming off that bench, and that's Kodi. CLAUDE FELTON: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Kodi, can you talk about your play today in the last couple of weeks? Why has it jumped up so much? And for the other two players, Jarvis and Ravern, the effect Kodi's had the last couple of weeks? KODI AUGUSTUS: We just are trying to win. You know what I mean? Playing together, doing whatever it takes. I mean, we've just been playing together and trying to get the win, whatever way possible. JARVIS VARNARDO: Well, Kodi just came in and added to. That's what we needed. Kodi, Brian, all our bench players came in and added to, that's what we needed to win. BARRY STEWART: Kodi's effort, I mean, it's been big for us coming off the bench and giving us some energy in scoring. Q. Can you talk about the defense that was key for y'all, I know you talked about stopping Woodbury, but what else? BARRY STEWART: Any time coach gives me an assignment, I take on that challenge. But I think rebounding, as far as us getting stops, but they're a good rebounding team, and I thought that was important for us tonight. Q. Are you guys surprised at how Kodi is playing? And as a whole how the bench is playing? JARVIS VARNARDO: Well, we always knew we could play like this. It was just to come in ask give us the effort, that's what we needed. We're not surprised at all. We know what all of them can do. Q. Your confidence now after these last couple of games and especially today, where is it at? KODI AUGUSTUS: It feels good. It's high, you know. It's always been high, but I guess even better now because it's starting to show and producing when I get in. But the confidence is real good. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes. Thank you very much. Q. I wonder if you could talk a little about pulling within five, and they be you hit the two threes and the response from your team after they started to pull close? RICK STANSBURY: Well, all good teams are going to make runs. I think we went up 15 points even at that time. They cut it to 5. Again, we came down and answered two big threes. Our team is capable of doing that. That's kind of the way we played. We played pretty loose. Those nights maybe when we don't shoot as well, sometimes we don't stop those runs. But we have that kind of ability. I thought tonight we didn't depend on the three point shot that much, but I looked at the stats and we still shot it 26 times. For us that's a low amount of attempts. That's been in the last three games since we've played a little bit bigger at times and slowed some of those three pointers down. But we have ability with a lot of different people to jump up and shoot the three-point shot from a lot of different places. I guess what makes us difficult to guard, we make those shots and we're really good. We don't, and you've got to depend on your rebounding and defend them a little bit more, and I think we've gotten better at that in the last cup of weeks. Q. I don't know if you've given this much thought. But this game put you past Richard Williams for most coached. Can you reflect on that? RICK STANSBURY: Only you guys would know that question. You're right, I've given it zero thought. Didn't even know about it. That means, hey, here's what it means. It means I've been here a long time to do that. That means I've had some good players, good assistant coaches and my A.D. hasn't run me out of town yet. That's what that means. It's pretty simple. Q. Going forward tomorrow what are you looking for in South Carolina? RICK STANSBURY: Well, it's very obvious, South Carolina is a different match-up for everybody. They've had a tremendous year. They've got the best guard in this league, and one of the best guards in the country from a standpoint of trying to keep him out of the paint. First time we played them, we weren't very successful in that first half. He got in the paint way too many times at our place. Second half we were a little better at him and found a way to win the game. But they're a tremendous team. They've got size on the inside. They've got some guys that can shoot the basketball. But Downey, absolutely, is the difference. Then you have Fredrick out there who is a guy who can really put it on the floor and shoot the basketball, too. So they're a difficult match-up for us. Q. How is Kodi maybe a different player now than he was earlier this season? RICK STANSBURY: Well, I think he started the first nine games for us and played about 20, 21 minutes a game. I don't think he had a game like he's played in his last three games. No question his effort has gotten better. It's started mentally with him. And sometimes it just takes I don't have the answer for sure. Some kids respond differently than other kids. But it has come on, that light has come on now that he wants the opportunity to play. And it came on in practice. Not in the game. He started practicing better three weeks ago, and he started getting a little bit of time. He started getting some time in those earlier games even though he wasn't having this kind of success. It's carried over and carried over. Once he's gotten in and had some success, now he's built on that. He's a different match-up for a lot of people. He's a big guy now that still can shoot the basketball. But he has the ability to pass it, and at his size, put it on the floor and drive the basketball to the paint which means now we don't have to depend on that three-point shot as much. That's one thing that's shown in these last three games. We get to the foul line. I think we get to the foul line 18 times a night to Georgia's four times. That's a huge stat when you can do that. Q. You talked about your bench earlier, and you were able to sort of, obviously, get into it. And late in the game get your starters out. How vital is that? Or how vital could it be in a situation like this, four games in four days? RICK STANSBURY: It's very vital. You've got to get that second game first for it to be important. If you don't get by the first one, it's not important. But every game you get by it becomes more important. It will be important tomorrow. It will become more important after the next game if you're able to win. And even more important after the next one. So I think the teams that have the ability to go to your bench are teams that will continue to have the ability to win games. I think it's huge right now. Our bench is really playing well for us. I think we've got 33 points tonight from it at Ole Miss. Saturday we got 7 from it. Florida, the game before that, we got 26 from it. That's huge, particularly when you go on a roll and go to your bench and those guys keep adding to two. Q. Georgia had a significant size advantage as far as weight on your guys? RICK STANSBURY: Yeah. Q. How are you guys able to negate those big bodies they had down low? RICK STANSBURY: Boy, we wouldn't win on the scale. I promise you. They probably weigh more on the back line than our whole team. We've got one guy that weighs 200 pounds, that's Jarvis. It says 205, but he's 203. We guard them with quickness. We took Phil Turner, weighs about 170 pounds and was able to keep his body away from Thompkins, where he can't seal you. Make them throw over top. And we sagged off of Jackson or Barnes whoever it was and took away that pass. That was huge for us. We beat them with quickness. I know the stat shows us only winning by one. Someone just pointed out to me they probably got four offensive rebounds in that last possession. And our team it's a huge stat. We've done better at that in the last two weeks. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|