Postgame Quotes vs. Tennessee Tech

OLE MISS HEAD COACH KERMIT DAVIS

Opening statement…
"Hats off to Tennessee Tech. We're having a hard time starting games, they played downhill on us, didn't really guard the ball screen action. I don't think Breein (Tyree) came out with a toughness defensively, and I think it's always got to start with our best player on that end. He did better in the second half. We just really struggled offensively in the first half, with the ball movement, missed a lot of wide open shots, Breein especially, and Blake (Hinson) stepped out of bounds twice. KJ (Buffen) had some great looks, still encouraging him to shoot the ball. He did better in the second half, got around the goal. It was good to see with 22 assists on 30 baskets, the ball continued to move. Second half was much better. Tennessee Tech played really hard. Great friend, great admiration for John (Pelphrey), he does a great job with his team, but we're about to get to big boy basketball. Starting with Wichita State, probably the fifth team we've played ranked at some point in the top 25.They're a team that could win the SEC championship regular season (if they played in the conference). So it's going to be a great test for us before league play starts."

On the halftime message…
"Just embarrassing. Ball movement, body language, jump shooting affected us. The last six or seven minutes we played a lot better defensively. Just simple ball screen coverage to start the game. They just looked faster than we did, had a little more pop and juice than we did. I decided to start Austin (Crowley) the second half instead of Blake. And I love Blake, he's one of my favorite guys that I've ever coached. I love his energy, everything, but Blake right now is trying to be somebody he's not. He's trying to make some plays right now that he doesn't need to make. He's a really really good player. There's NBA players right now that get paid a ton of money to just do the things that they were signed to do, and Blake's trying to play out of character. One thing he did do tonight was rebound the ball."

On the out-of-character play from Blake Hinson…
"Just taking off offensively. He loves just loves dribbling the ball, and I want to give him the opportunity to take it and break. Simple plays, make simple plays. He got double digit rebounds, that's good. I just think he can be a terrific player, and he's got to be able to guard his position. My expectations for Blake are really really high."

On Devontae Shuler finding his confidence shooting…
"He got some really good looks in that first half off of some 15-foot midrange shots off some curl screen action. I thought he looked comfortable and made a couple of big shots for us. He had five assists and two turnovers, which I'm proud of. Devontae has got to guard the ball better. Maybe we've got him playing too many minutes. Tonight, Devontae played 33 (minutes), that's not too many for him. Probably would be a great number around 28 to 30 minutes in some of these really high-level games. I'm really proud of what he's doing. He's found his niche shooting the ball."

On slow starts…
"It's pretty simple. It's just defending, using the dribble and the ball just doesn't move real early. All of a sudden, we kind of had our back up against the wall, and that ball started popping around in the second half. We started looking like a team that was playing unselfish."

On how to correct the slow starts…
"I've always had fast start teams, so I just keep doing what I've always done. I've had teams that always come out and are so juiced up defensively that they would create offense through defense. We did it to some extent last year, especially in games like this. Right now, we're not doing that early on. We've had good days of practice. We came back after the break and the guys were physical and attentive. It's just college basketball. We'd all like to be up 20 at the half, but we weren't. We're getting tested, and that's a good thing that we're in live games. Our competition is going to get more fierce here in the next two months, but we'll just keep working at it. It's what I've always done and we'll just stick to what we've done."

On the identity of the team…
"I think all coaches try to get their teams to play to the personality of the head coach and we're not there yet. People that have watched our teams, and I've coached about 780 games now, that the one thing people say is that 'Kermit's team is tough and they share the ball.' It's pretty simple, that's what they've always done. Right now, I've got to get our team tougher. Tougher defensively, tougher rebounding the ball, more connected defensively. I do think we're starting to share the ball better. Is it a good thing that Breein can not score in double figures and Blake can not score in double figures and we still win by a margin like this? That's good, at least it shows we can do that. I was looking at the Butler box score the other day and Kamar Baldwin, who couldn't miss in this gym, was 1-for-11. They still found a way to win by 30. Guys are going to have off nights but you've got to stick true to form defending."

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Players Mentioned

Blake Hinson

Devontae Shuler

The University of Mississippi Athletics