Fresno State Athletics
QUOTES: Fresno State 84, The Master's College 72
12/3/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Rodney Terry, Fresno State Head Coach
On the play of Master's College...
"You have to give those guys a lot of credit in terms of the way they came in and played. They played the way we thought that they would play, in terms of our preparation. We knew that they would come in and shoot the basketball at any time in a possession. On defense you couldn't have our hands down. I'm not really surprised in the way they played."
"They were really scrappy. They really out scrapped us the first half, and that's hard for me to say. That's something we like to hang our hat on, we take a lot of pride in being the scrappy team. We're the team that out competes the other team."
"This game was a great lesson for our guys to learn you have to take every game and understand how important it is. I'm not saying they didn't think it was important but they didn't come out with the level of intensity and attention to detail we need to have."
In the energy from Terrell Carter III...
"Terrell came in and gave us a great lift. He's been doing a good job in practice over the last two weeks. I think his attitude and approach has been really good. It's just on us to find an opportunity for him to get in and have a chance to play. Tonight, I think he came into the game invested and talking. He gave these guys a great lift to get things going a little bit for us.
On their next game against Cal Poly...
"We know we're going to play a well-coached Cal Poly team. They're an older and experienced team. We're on the road. They're a team that has a chance to contend for their championship in the Big West. We're familiar with our opponent. We've played them every year I've been here. We know that we're going into a hostile environment. They're going to have a good crowd over there and they're a good team. We feel like we have a good team. We feel like we'll be ready for the challenge. We'll be ready to compete."
On playing offensively in the paint...
"We definitely had the mindset that we wanted to try to attack and play inside out. We were shooting over 60 percent for the better part of the game. I don't think anything in regards to offense; we drilled our guys tonight about our defense. Our attitude and approach to the defense side of the ball wasn't where it needed to be tonight. We took a couple of steps back. We can't do that; you can't do that this time of year. Especially when you're trying to build on that end of the floor."
"There was never a concern about our offense. We got a chance to play against a man-to-man defense for the first time in five games and we got into a pretty good flow. There were some possessions where we were really trying to make a conscious effort to put the ball inside."
On their perimeter defense against 3-pointers...
"I'm not going to take anything away from Reid Shackelford, he played well tonight. I thought their team played really hard and played well. I give them a lot of credit. He made a lot of tough shots."
" I thought that we did not have the intensity and attention to detail tonight on that end of the floor. There were times when we were supposed to be in couple of defenses that we weren't. For whatever reason we didn't do what we needed to do. Again, we've challenged our guys to follow through on those details we're trying to get better at. We're going to be able to score the ball night in and night out. It's about our defense. We know we've got a long way to go without defense. We're going to continue to buy in on that end of the floor."
On having a slow start in the last two games...
"I think we go into every game with the mindset that we want to try to put our will on the defensive side of the ball coming out and really competing on that side of floor. I think if you get engaged defensively the offense part come easy. You play with a free mind on the offensive side but you have to be fully engaged defensively. In the last two games particularly we've started off with poor possessions in terms of our defensive rotation and what we're trying to get done on that end of the floor. They're all things that we can fix. There is nothing we're doing wrong defensively that we can't fix. It's going to be the "want to" and the "buy in" part on that end of the floor. I think we can be as good as we want to defensively. We just have to want to do it collectively on every possession."
Marvelle Harris, Fresno State, Senior, Guard
On the lesson that can be learned from the game...
"You have to come out ready to play every game no matter who you are playing. It is more about us than the opponent, so we have to come out and be ready to play."
