Opening Statement…
“Romello White and (Devontae) Shuler are pretty good players, older players. Schuler is an All-SEC guard and played like it, particularly down the stretch. Romello White was a monster in there. Our strategy was to front the post, front it to a fault, make them lob it over the top, but our bigs just wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. We probably could’ve doubled a little bit more. I was just disappointed that we couldn’t keep it out of there and make them lob it over the top. I asked the guys after the game just to do the little things, the basics. You score 84 points against a team that gives up 63 a game and is the number two defensive team – it’s not our offense, it’s our ability to defend, defense, rebounding, toughness, strength, just getting pushed around. The guys, defensively, don’t have to be Superman. They’ve just got to do a better job of getting the guy in front of you and a better job of communicating, a better job of getting a deflection, forcing some more turnovers. Five-point lead at the end of regulation, timeout. Steven Pearl drew up both plays they were going to run. He drew them both up. Shuler set a back screen, we didn’t stay sticky, he comes off it and knocks down a 3-ball. Then they ran something else where they cleared us out and drove us downhill. Can’t guard, can’t win.
On the final shot from Shuler…
“He’s a veteran player. The zone had been good for us. Again, when they ran that middle ball screen, we asked our guards to switch out. They didn’t. They switched flat, which then let Shuler get to his spot. It’s just simple things like that that we could’ve done better or differently. A lot of stuff we talked about doing, we didn’t do.”
On Jaylin Williams and Sharife Cooper setting up the late 3 for Auburn…
“Our guys have done a really good job competing and fighting and playing hard. We played really well today. We did a lot of really good things. You score 84 against Ole Miss, man. Now, I thought we had some careless turnovers. That was a real problem for us. Sharife (Cooper) and Allen (Flanigan) had 11 turnovers. That’s a lot. Some teams don’t have 11 turnovers. That was a factor for us. They had 17 points off our turnovers. Were all of them forced? I don’t think so. Our guys are obviously competing until the end. The pressure was a factor. We turned them over. We just didn’t finish.”
On what changed from the 14-point lead to the end of regulation…
“I’ll have to go back and look at it. My guess is that we stopped rebounding and they got to the paint. I don’t know exactly what the issue is. We had a couple of really bad turnovers. Passing with no purpose, stepping out of bounds, or just not valuing possessions offensively and not getting stops on the defensive end. Ole Miss got some real effort and energy plays. Their two best players were dominant tonight. I thought overall we played well. We did a lot of really good things. The kids played hard. Down the stretch, I even told our guys in timeouts, ‘If we get beat, they’ll say they were older, more experienced, been there done that.’ I said, ‘Let’s not let that happen.’ We told them what they would do and they did it.”