The University of Mississippi Athletics
Post Game Quotes - Vanderbilt
2/6/2016 | Men's Basketball
Ole Miss Head Coach Andy Kennedy
On the win…
"It puts us back in the game a little bit. Our hope and prayer is that we get the report that we're anticipating on Monday on Sebas (Sebastian Saiz), and he'll join us, hopefully, as soon as possible. We stumbled a little bit. We were up by 13 with five to play and in complete control. Then, we got really passive, telegraphing passes. Vanderbilt is a good team. If you're loose with the ball around (Wade) Baldwin, he's going to make you pay. We got a little loose with the ball, and he ran through some and made some plays. Next thing you know, it's back to a two point game. We challenged our group. This group has not handled in-game adversity as well as we need to. We've wilted at times, for whatever the reason. Tonight, we settled in. We made some hard plays. The biggest plays of the game were off missed shots. Marcanvis Hymon fighting. Anthony Perez fighting on the offensive glass. Fouls, we go make free throws. We were keeping balls alive with our effort. It was huge for our guys. It shows what we're capable of. Vanderbilt is going to have a tremendous season. They were a difficult matchup for us without Sebas in having to guard them. We really struggled with it. They shoot 46 percent. We shoot 36, but we got 19 big offensive rebounds. We only turned it over 10 times. We made plays down the stretch."
On players stepping up…
"There's no question. Could you imagine the way (Hymon) played against South Carolina to the way he played now. Usually, you see that kind of improvement in a year. It's only been a couple of weeks, but he's been thrust into that role. We knew we were going to zone a lot. We were trying to keep them out of rhythm. Vanderbilt is a tremendous rhythm offensive team. They turned it over 19 times, which tells me it was effective with the changing of the defenses. When we were in man, that big guy morphed us inside. Hymon picked up early fouls. We were very small upfront. We just wanted to hang around. There were a couple of times in the first half the game could have gotten away from us. We made plays to stay around."
