The University of Mississippi Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Eastern Kentucky
11/13/2017 | Men's Basketball
Head Coach Andy Kennedy
Opening statement…
"I thought we had a good opening night against a quality team like Louisiana, who challenged us. A lot emotionally, and I thought it was electric for us. It kind of reminded me of an early SEC game. Louisiana is a good team, and I like the fact that our guys never flinched. We won by 18, but I was really pleased with the way we played; tonight, not so much. We knew that tonight it was going to be a completely different tempo. Louisiana is like us; they want to go up and down, but EKU plays late in the game. We knew they were going to go to Nick Mayo a lot, who is a really good player, and we allowed them to control the tempo. I think we added about 19, but I wish we had finished stronger. Some of that is just not making good decisions with the ball, hopefully that will clean up. My biggest concern from two games is simply our inability to be as athletic on the defensive end as we do to be on the offensive end. So that tells me our drive has to be much greater on the defensive end of the floor. My biggest takeaway from tonight is our inability to contain the bounce, which causes unnecessary rotations. They did a good job of finding the extra guy and scoring late in the shot clock. Our decision-making offensively, when we make the right one, we are about 66 percent consistent on our field goals. We are just not making the right decision enough, and that is something we need to get better at."
On Dominik Olejniczak…
"We gave him the challenge of guarding Nick Mayo and they run all their offense through him. I thought he did a decent job with it. I thought we over-helped sometimes, we under-help sometimes and we don't rotate properly based on lack of communication. Those are things I am going to continue to challenge, most definitely, the upperclassmen of the team, because that's where it is going to start."
On Deandre Burnett…
"He really only had two bone-head plays. He let the kid take his ball when we were up by 17 because he was trying to do too much and had a similar situation against Louisiana. Overall I am really pleased with him, but he has to be a better position defender. He has to be always thinking one step ahead of the game, because he's not going to make that difference up. He knows that. He just has to be more engaged mentally. As the oldest guy on the floor, he has to be more open and loud and take ownership in the locker room. Markel Crawford is our most consistent perimeter defender as far as doing most things right. He will typically grades out the highest just by being in the right place the majority of the time."
Second half performance…
"We have always been better in the second half because we can be in their ear a little more because they are in front of us. We had spurts, but we need to be more consistent. We are still trying to figure out who can play with who. We are still mixing and matching to formulate a formation."
