Jan. 18, 2012
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Highlights | Fisher, Thames Press Conference | Tapley Postgame | Thames Postgame
Postgame quotes following 16th-ranked San Diego State's 75-70 victory at New Mexico at The Pit.
SDSU Head Coach Steve Fisher
Opening statement...
"I will be brief, I don't have to say how sweet a victory it was for San Diego State. We appeared to be on the verge of being blown out when they went ahead ten to nothing and we made three substitutions, Franklin, Green and Stevens guided the ship for us. It is hard to win anywhere but it is doubly difficult to win in The Pit against this team who had won 13 straight. We are very pleased with what we did. We won 16 games now and we have different guys at different times who have made big plays. We won five or six really close games and it has never been the same guy and, again tonight, we had a lot of people who made big contributions. Xavier (Thames) kept us in the game by making plays and gave us the chance to win. I think that if you look at the schedule that we have had, we had some games that were at best a coin flip and we won five of them. We found ways to win all the others, by everything from overtime to last second. When you win, like everything else, you feel like you are going to win the next one."
UNM Head Coach Steve Alford
Opening statement...
"It was a tough game for us. I give San Diego State a lot of credit. They are a very good basketball team. I thought they really guarded and we took way too many three point shots. When you take 30 three's in a game you better make a bucket load of them. I thought they did a really good job defensively. We had a couple of droughts, one in the first half and one in the second half and in those droughts we didn't guard very well and that really affected us. I thought we did a pretty good job starting the game with our dribble-drive defense and then it progressively got worse. It was a great run and a great streak and now we have to start over. This had a lot of feel to the New Mexico State game we had here a couple months ago at home. I thought we got out toughed a little bit and that is a great credit to San Diego State. I thought they did a lot of good things in the second half physically to us and we didn't adjust very well to it."
On the spacing....
"I thought it was really poor. We were pretty poor offensively in the second half and then we allowed that to affect our defense and we hadn't been doing that. We have had a two month span where even if we haven't been on offensively we have done a good job defensively. I thought the first half that we were much better defensively than what we were in the second half. You have a guy like LaBradford Franklin who didn't play the last game and he gets nine points and 13 minutes in this game. They had some guys step up and play and I thought we did a good job on Tapley, but you have to give them credit. Thames (Xavier) came in and did a lot of good things in this game and might have gotten his career high. I thought he (Thames) and their point guards really hurt us."
On searching for a player to fire up the team...
"When it was starting to get away from us you do that. Basically, the rotation was the same except for Demetrius getting in foul trouble, when he got in foul trouble that affected his minutes tonight. We decided to go four guards when we got down just to try and increase tempo so that changed it a little bit. I thought Cam (Cameron Bairstow) gave us some good stuff and had some good minutes off the bench and that was good. It was good to get Hugh (Greenwood) back in there and he did a really good job of controlling things but you can tell that he has had two weeks of not playing. Hopefully, this gets him back and doesn't have any ill effects from his foot and everything will be good going into the weekend."
On Xavier Thames...
"He was the difference in the game. I thought both point guards really broke us down. We wanted to do some switching and I thought our bigs did a really poor job with that switching when they got to the basket. We wanted our bigs to do some more scoring and we didn't force that to happen and I thought that we had a lot of breakdown defensively."
On the start of the game..
"The start was great, it was 10 or 12 to nothing and there was a lot of energy. I liked our switching and then we got complacent. I thought we got softer as the game got going instead of tougher as the game got going, and that was the frustrating part. They start four guards and on Saturday (at UNLV) they start four guards and they are big, so you either win the big deal or pick your poison. Their four guards were better than us playing our two bigs tonight. We did not get enough things inside and that is a great credit to their defense."
On the 14 game season and losing right away...
"We probably have the toughest environment that we have to go into (Thomas and Mack) and they (UNLV) are outstanding. They are a really good and deep basketball team so we have our hands full. This was a difficult week and it did not start out well for us so we have to pick things up and make some adjustments and play better on Saturday. It makes it very difficult in the league race when you lose games at home and losing this one puts our back against the wall early in the conference race, and now we have to make up for that on the road."
On turnaround...
"This is where our senior leadership has to do a good job because we have a lot of young players. This was the first environment like this for Demetrius and he got into foul trouble and that hurt us a little bit with our bench. Phillip came up big but it will be a big test to our seniors to make sure that they are ready to go and get the younger guys ready. This will be the best basketball team that we have played (UNLV) in the best environment that we have played so it will be a tough task."
On settling for shots...
"I think that was what was frustrating about our offense. I give their (SDSU) defense credit and is why it had a mirror image of the game against New Mexico State here at home and we obviously lost that one. Our offense got stagnant and we took too many deep shots instead of continuing to attack the basket and that affected us because we didn't get to the free throw line. We only had 10 free throw attempts, which might be a season low. I just didn't think we attacked offensively and we settled for shots which affected our defense, which is immature. We haven't shown that in about two months, but tonight we showed that in the second half."