December 04, 2002
Texas A&M Head Coach Melvin Watkins:
(On Turner's late scoring binge) "It was like the Twilight Zone. At one point, I looked up and our entire team was on the court. Kevin (Turner) had a great run and it built a lot of confidence. All games are important. We've learned that we have to take it one game at a time. We can celebrate tonight, but tomorrow we have to get ready for Prairie View on Saturday. It was a very good win for us. Each time we come out to play we learn something. The crowd was great and the atmosphere was great. We think this is going to be a fun year in Aggie basketball. We have a lot to learn from this win. We let them back in it and we need to get better at putting away games early. They went to a zone and caught us standing around in the second half. That's what a zone defense is designed to do. We have not played against zone defenses very much so we may need to put in another wrinkle. We need to attack the lanes better and learn to play more aggressive."
Tennessee Head Coach Buzz Peterson: "The first half reminded us of our first game (against Gardner-Webb). We've got to focus on getting the ball inside. Just when we got it back, we gave up 20 points in 3 ˝ minutes. A&M did a great job down the stretch. We fell asleep the last 3 ˝ minutes. In the first half, we tried to give Ron (Slay) the outside shot. He wasn't hitting it and later we were able to get it to him inside. He and Crump had a big game. (Bernard) King and (Antoine) Wright are great players. And when you add in (Kevin) Turner, they are really good. We had a rough time shooting threes. Somehow, we've got to get our shots to go down. That's going to come. We're going to focus on it in practice. We had some missed opportunities down the stretch. Playing the zone defense was good for us, but we couldn't score."
Tennessee Forward Ron Slay: "A&M can shoot. We had some mental lapses, leaving guys open in transition. I relaxed a little more in the second half and just knocked them (his shots) down. We've got to get the ball inside. We've got to concentrate. Focus and stick with the game plan. Our hats are off to A&M."
Tennessee Forward Brandon Crump: "We just weren't hitting our shots and they were. Plus the crowd was behind them. It was really frustrating and someone has got to step up. It felt like there was nothing I could do when A&M got into a rhythm and started knocking down threes."