Texas A&M
24-9
Utah State
27-8
Aggies Oust Utah State, 69-53
Mar 19, 2010 | Men's Basketball
March 19, 2010
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| Highlights 
| Post Game Press Conference
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)--Khris Middleton scored a career-high 19 points and fifth-seeded Texas A&M beat No. 12 Utah State 69-53 on Friday in the opening round of the South Regional.
The Aggies (24-9) advanced to the second round for the fifth consecutive year. They will face No. 4 seed Purdue on Sunday.
B.J. Holmes had 11 for Texas A&M, which disrupted Utah State into one of its worst shooting performances of the season and dominated the rebounding.
Utah State (27-8) lost its fifth consecutive first-round game. Its last win came in 2001 over Ohio State. The Aggies shot 38 percent, well below their season average of 49 percent, and scored 20 points below their season average.
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Mark Turgeon, Khris Middleton, BJ Holmes, & David Loubeau [mp3] Utah State Head Coach & |
Middleton, a 6-foot-7 forward whose previous high was 17 points, did not become a starter until after the team was reconfigured to deal with the horrific broken leg sustained by guard Derrick Roland in late December at Washington. Middleton has been a solid performer, but elevated his play in the Big 12 tournament, averaging 15 points in three games.
Middleton scored 14 points in the first half as Texas A&M used sharp shooting to take 42-29 lead.
Consecutive 3-pointers by Middleton keyed a 10-0 run that gave A&M a 14-5 lead. Middleton, who averages 7.0 points per game, hit another 3 for a 21-13 lead as Utah State made just six of its first 14 shots.
Jaxon Myaer's basket for Utah State cut the A&M lead to three points, but Middleton replied with his fourth 3-pointer and Holmes added two as A&M took a 30-20 lead.
Texas A&M closed with a 10-4 run over the final 4 minutes for a 42-29 halftime lead. They shot 56 percent in the first half, including making 6 of 12 3-point attempts. Utah State shot 41 percent in the first half, and was outrebounded 22-11.
Middleton, rated one of the best high school shooters in the nation at Charleston, S.C., made all four of his attempts in the first.
Utah State hung around in the second half, as Texas A&M cooled off a bit. Nate Bendall's rebound and layup brought the Aggies within 49-42 with 12:33 left.
But Texas A&M scored eight straight points to build a 57-42 lead with 9 minutes left.
Jared Quayle's first field goal since he scored Utah State's first two baskets cut the A&M lead to 57-47. But A&M rattled off eight straight points, capped by Holmes' 3-pointer, for a 65-47 lead with 4 minutes left.
Donald Sloan was the fourth A&M player in double figures with 10. The Aggies shot 49 percent in the game, making 8 of 18 3-point attempts and 11 of 14 free throws.
A team that averages 42 percent from 3-point range, Utah State made just 5 of 20, and missed all four of its free throw attempts. Utah State was 23-0 this season when making at least five 3-pointers.
Quayle, Utah State's all-Western Athletic Conference guard, was 5 of 18 from the field in one of the worst shooting performances of his USU career.
Tai Wesley led Utah State with 14 points, while Quayle scored 11.
Utah State has been to the tournament 19 times, but is 6-21 overall.
POSTGAME QUOTES
Texas A&M Quotes
THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and have an opening statement from Coach Turgeon and then take questions for the student-athletes.
COACH TURGEON: Obviously we're really happy with the way we played. I thought defensively we were good for 36 minutes. Start of the second half about the 18 minute mark to about the 14 minute mark we were a little bit tired and didn't rebound very well and by that time they were tired and they missed some open looks because we had just really guarded them the first 20 minutes.
We executed, we made shots, Khris hit four in the first half and B.J. hit some open looks and I think we're a good zone offense team and we worked really hard on it this week and we executed well and made shots. So but it all came down to defense. We didn't guard last weekend, so I was on them pretty hard this week in practice about defending and we have done it for one game. Now we got to do it on Sunday.
THE MODERATOR: Take questions for the student-athletes.
Q. B.J., talk about that stretch around the 12 minute mark or just under it where Middleton hit the three. I think it was against the zone and you hit back to back and that kind of opened things up.
B.J. Holmes: Yeah, that was in the zone because Khris hit his. He moved the ball great all day and was able to find the open shooters and then I think the shot clock was going down. Sloan had his hand and they collapsed and Sloan and I was wide open and able to knock it down.
Q. Khris, could you talk not just about today but the last couple weeks the way you've been shooting the ball?
Khris Middleton: Just feeling real confident. Shooting the ball knowing it's going to go in. If I miss the previous one just shoot the next one and think it's going to go in.
Q. For B.J., what made you more effective defensively today? What were you most pleased with your defensive effort?
B.J. Holmes: I think we just fought through a lot of screens. They set a lot of them. Rebounded the ball pretty good and limited them to one shot and I think that as we go on in the tournament we're going to have to play great team defense as a team because there's a lot of good teams in the tournament. And if you just have one player playing good defense you're not going to go too far.
Q. David, you picked up two quick fouls in the first half but then you came back what did you do differently to stay out of foul trouble?
David Loubeau: I tried to get low, pushing them out and just stay between my man and the basket really, that's really it.
Q. B.J., what was the key for you guys being effective on Jared Quayle?
B.J. Holmes: We tried to wear him down. We knew he was going to play a lot of minutes. Me, Dash and Sloan tried to pick him up a little in the back court to try to wear him down throughout the game and just fight through the screens, not giving up open shots, playing all the shots. I think we did a good job.
Q. David, talk about the effectiveness in the second half against Wesley after how good he was in the first.
David Loubeau: I was just like I said again just being going three quarters, just being physical with him and making him take tough shots.
Q. B.J., can you just discuss getting this first win? I think it's five straight years you get that first round victory. Is there kind of a sense of relief now to get that first one out of the way?
B.J. Holmes: Yeah, we have been talking about that. We didn't come here just to win one game and it's a great win for us today, but we can't celebrate. We need to get back to the hotel and focus on Purdue.
Q. To any of you, with the way the games went yesterday, as a team do you guys see that and talk about it and as the higher seed be aware of what was going on in the tournament?
Khris Middleton: We all watched the games, looked at the scores. We just don't want to be one of those teams that get upset or on the highlights losing to the team that we shouldn't be losing to.
B.J. Holmes: It's March, anything can happen. We don't underestimate anybody no matter what the number is by our name. So we go out and play everybody like they don't have a number by their name, just go play as hard as you can.
David Loubeau: We just going out there and just having fun. That's all it is, really.
Q. Khris, do you have any feeling before the game when you were warming up or just any feeling early that you were going to be that on? I think you hit your first five threes.
Khris Middleton: Going into the game I was a little nervous but once we started playing I started to relax and just played. I think that kind of helped me knock down those threes.
Q. David, how important was it or how big was it when Wesley got in foul trouble? Seemed like he was in foul trouble the whole game.
David Loubeau: It was pretty big. We were trying to do that the whole game, get him in foul trouble. To just be easier to battle on the boards.
THE MODERATOR: We'll let the student-athletes go and take questions for coach.
Q. How great of an experience is it when you can kind of empty out your bench in a NCAA tournament game?
COACH TURGEON: Well, I thought the kids that got in deserved to play at the end. But just to say you played an NCAA tournament game I think is pretty important. So I wanted to make sure I did that, got everybody in. And doesn't happen much in this tournament. And we were able to do it today. But, yeah, it was fun.
They cut it to eight I think in the second half or seven once and got a little tight, but then we started to play again. So just it's a good 40 minute effort from the guys.
Q. Talk about your guys 3-point shooting, especially in the second half. They went zone and man and nothing really seemed to work against your guys 3-point shooting tonight.
COACH TURGEON: Well, we made shots. Khris got hot. Khris is capable. He hasn't shot the ball great all year and the last month he started to shoot it well. He just gets better every time he plays. So that helped us and we expect B.J. to make every shot so, we got some good looks and we really moved the ball well against their zone. We worked on zone offense every day this week.
And it showed today. Our movement was better, passing was better. Our whole thing was Utah State had to beat us with 2s today. And we didn't help down, we let Wesley do his thing in there and stayed close to shooters. The only time we really let down was in the second half and Quayle missed two or three wide open ones which he normally doesn't miss but I think they were sagging. You could see right before half time they were sagging because they had to work so hard to get a shot. You look at our minutes, compared to their minus, Sloan played 34, but Sloan could play 80 in a day. And we shared our minutes well and I think our depth kind of wore them down. That's why they didn't shoot the ball as well.
Q. How much of Purdue have you seen and what are your thoughts about that matchup tomorrow?
COACH TURGEON: I hope it's not tomorrow. I hope it's Sunday. But...
(Laughter.)
I coached against Matt when I was an assistant at Southern Illinois and he's he was the head coach there and he's just a great coach. And he's got a lot out of this team. I think what happened with them is they got mad at everybody saying they were going to lose, that they were done. And they kind of regrouped and had a great day today.
I know they're going to run their motion, know they're going to be real physical. They're going to guard us, and it's two defensive minded teams and I think whoever makes the most plays, obviously, will win the game. But I got a lot of respect for Matt and his staff. They work hard and do it the right way.
Q. You talked earlier in the week about how they run sets and how well they run their offense but can you just talk about the way you ran yours? Because the first half it looked like the roles had switched almost.
COACH TURGEON: Yeah, well when you make shots it makes you look better. We made some shots. We really executed. Our secondary break was good, and our zone offense was good and we really executed our half court man-to-man. So we have executed well all year and sometimes we didn't make shots and it doesn't look quite as good. Today we made them and it looked nice. Second half we didn't make them. We struggled a little bit more to score but there was a stretch there, the eight minute mark to the four minute mark we really executed when we had to and built the lead back up.
So we executed tonight. I thought we followed our defensive game plan. We played with great energy and the guys executed our game plan much better than we did last weekend against Kansas. So that's why we were successful.
Q. What was the specific plan on Quayle? What did you do exactly against him?
COACH TURGEON: They run plays for him and within their system they have certain plays that they run and Quayle hit the three in the second half. I don't know if it was his first or second three. And he made that one. I thought we guarded that better the rest of the night. And we tried to pick him up and wear him down. But he missed three or four open ones. It was a combination of us and it just wasn't his day. Sometimes when you can't get an open look then all of a sudden you get one you rush it a little bit. And a lot of their jump shots came up short in the second half and I think it just wore them down. I thought we did a really nice job defensively.
Q. You guys seemed to have the luxury of rolling in a lot of length rotating in and out.
COACH TURGEON: I thought we did a great job with Loubeau and Bryan Davis with two fouls in the second half. At the 12 minute mark they both had two fouls. And they were able to play Wesley with two fouls more than we did but I thought those two went back in and did a nice job. Then I thought Nate and Ray really had great minutes. I thought Ray really helped us in the second half of course he's mad at me now because he thought he should have played more in the second half, so he won't look at me. But we'll work it out.
But, no, I really didn't play a lot of guys, but I wasn't going into this game with the long media timeouts thinking I was going to play nine guys just to play nine guys. The guys are going to play well and I'm going to play them. Naji only played five minutes and he really helped in those five minutes. It just gives us a little bit more depth.
Q. Coach tell us what its like to be in the second round now.
COACH TURGEON: We want to go further. We want to advance. 32 is nice and to win the first round game, especially sitting around you ask the guys if they were worried about being up. I was a nervous thinking about how the games went yesterday and I know how good some of the teams are that lost. We were dialed in. But yeah it's a great accomplishment. Final 32, and down to two, us and Pittsburgh, and there was some teams in that company that didn't even make the tournament this year. So just to make the tournament five years in a row for Texas A&M, where we were and where we are now is huge. Hopefully down the road we'll expect to be in it and expect to make runs. But we're proud of that. But we didn't come here just to win the first game. We really didn't. And hopefully we can play well again on Sunday and give ourselves a chance.
Q. Yesterday you talked about going through the Big-12 wars would help you in the tournament. Could you expand on that in light of today's game and the chess match?
COACH TURGEON: Our league is -- Texas lost at the buzzer, or we would be 5-0. I don't know who is playing today. Our league is -- it was phenomenal this year. Saw a lot of good athletes, saw a lot of good shooters, saw teams that ran they're half court. Oklahoma State ran a lot of plays like Utah State so you had to really prepare quickly for a lot of sets. And we just saw a lot of good teams, a lot of good players. Probably the only thing I was disappointed in was the way we rebounded in the second half. I thought that with our length our size our athleticism we should have rebounded better than we did. But hopefully we'll rebound better on Sunday.
THE MODERATOR: All right, thanks, coach.
Utah State Quotes
THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and have an opening statement from Coach Morrill and then take questions for the student-athletes.
COACH MORRILL: Well I thought that Texas A&M really put on a dominating defensive performance. They deserve all the credit in the world. They made it very, very difficult for us to get good looks at the basket. They're physical. We just had a hard time scoring. We didn't shoot the ball very well when we got open shots. But it's hard when you don't get as many as you are used to getting. All of a sudden you get one and we had to rush it a little bit.
I had heard they were good defensively, but to see it firsthand is pretty impressive. That's by far the best defensive team we have played all year long. We would have had to have had a much better shooting night to have had a chance to be in the basketball game.
We made a little run there in the second half, but they pretty much answered that and that was about all we had in us. So all the credit in the world to them.
THE MODERATOR: Take questions for the student-athletes.
Q. Jared, did they do anything specifically that really contributed to your shooting night or was it more you?
JARED QUAYLE: Just like coach said, they did a good defensive job tonight. They got up in us. They pressured us. They're strong. I had plenty of wide open looks, they just weren't falling tonight.
Q. For Tai and Tyler, can you guys talk about the length and the size that you guys had to face today?
TAI WESLEY: Personally I was shocked how strong and physical they were. They came out just at the start and really were trying to throw us around. And that really surprised me and you got to give them credit for how physical and strong they were inside and definitely on the defensive end.
TYLER NEWBOLD: They got some really athletic long wing players. And I really don't know what else to say. They're a good team. They play well together. And they took it to us today.
Q. The reason why I brought it up it seemed like your bigs were taking a lot of mid range shots, like 17 footers, that sort of thing. Was that because early on you guys kind of had your struggles inside? Did you feel like you settled at all for mid range shots later on?
TYLER NEWBOLD: I don't think we -- I think I think we were trying to score inside. I think we were -- that's been the focus all year is getting the ball into the paint and trying to get easy baskets and that's what we were trying to do.
They just did a better job of outphysicaling us and contesting all of our shots. When we did get an open look we didn't knock too many of those down. So when that happens it's going to be tough to win.
Q. Tyler, Middleton came into the game shooting 29 percent from 3-point range. He hit five in a row. Was that a surprise to you guys? Was that -- what accounted for that other than him just hitting some shots?
TYLER NEWBOLD: I don't think -- it wasn't a big surprise to me because he had been shooting the ball really well as of late. We did not do a very good job in our zone locating him in the corner. And he got a lot of open looks when we were playing zone. We just didn't rotate fast enough and when anyone gets hot like that they, no matter what their percentages are, they feel like they can make anything. And that's what he did to us.
Q. Tai, it wasn't the start you wanted, especially to get a quick foul on you. The fouls start getting in your head a little bit or what happened with the couple of fouls on you?
TAI WESLEY: I don't know. It was not a good start for me. I traveled on one, I got a foul on the other. It took a little bit to get used to the game the way the refs were calling the game. It seemed like it was a lot more physical than what they let us do during the regular season. It seemed like you were able to put a lot of pressure on the guy with the ball, so it kind of just threw me off for a little bit and took me a while to get my bearings, which didn't help our team and our start.
Q. Jared, what would it have meant if you got two wide open looks, while you guys were down seven at the time, either nine or seven, if you would have made one of those shots? I mean, would adrenaline have kicked in and you guys would have been able to maybe pull something off a little bit?
JARED QUAYLE: Maybe. You just never know. I didn't make those shots. So it's hard to say. But usually when guys are hitting shots it helps pick up the rest of the team and you kind of get into a rhythm and a flow. So maybe it would have.
Q. Jared, Texas A&M mentioned that one of their goals was to wear you guys down and give you a lot of pressure. Was there any fatigue at all towards the end of the game when things were getting a little bit dicey?
JARED QUAYLE: For me it was nice because they weren't picking up full court. So personally I didn't feel any fatigue. You get tired at points during the game, when you're going hard and you know you're trying to make big stops and stuff. But just they were very physical and they're big and it probably wore us down a little. But that's no excuse. We just need to push through that and keep playing ball.
Q. Last year when you played Marquette you were able to fight through a slow start. Another slow start this year. Tai, what needs to happen if you make it back next year to make sure that this team does not go through a slow start to start the game like this again?
TAI WESLEY: To probably make our first few shots. Get easy shots, you know, try to get a couple layups to start the game. I don't really know. I think that it's definitely our goal to get back here and have this experience under our belt where we will come out and start well and have a good game.
Q. Tai, I know this wound is pretty fresh, but obviously you lose Jared, but you don't lose anybody else. Do you guys have the potential to be a pretty good team next year with all of the experience and talent coming back?
TAI WESLEY: I definitely think we have the experience and we're only losing Jared, but Jared's been a big part of this team. And we will miss Jared. But we, we're going to need guys to step up and fill those shoes that Jared will leave for them. But I'm saddened about this season being over and definitely optimistic about next season.
THE MODERATOR: Okay, thank you. We'll excuse the players and take questions for coach.
Q. We have seen in this spectrum all year that the team comes out strong, you can see the confidence in their eye, they run and gun, the games have been close, two or 3-point games, the rest are 20, 30 point blow outs. How do you feel they respond to the other side when they come out and they start struggling a little bit, does the attitude kind of shift? Do they start to kind of doubt themselves and suffer from that a little bit as we saw in Jared's shooting, seeing his face, he just seemed to have lost the confidence as the game went on.
COACH MORRILL: I think we kept battling. We came out in the second half and talked about playing in four minute segments and got the margin down where it was reasonable. We haven't played anybody as good as Texas A&M. That's a really good basketball team. That's a 13 RPI team, a Top-25 team, an 11-5 team in the best conference in the country and they showed me why today. It was the competition.
I don't think our guys gave in and quit playing, I think that Texas A&M just physically dominated us. They are strong, big, they're very well coached. You know one thing I will mention, they have a zero knucklehead factor. Sometimes we can have a chance to gain a little advantage if we play a team that has the knucklehead factor, they don't. And that's a credit to Mark and the job he's doing and to the caliber of kids that they have. Because there was none of that. They are all about being together and defending and playing good basketball. I thought they were very good today and showed why they have been good all year long.
Q. The players said last year that there was a little bit of shock before the game. Didn't seem like there was any of that but that the shots weren't falling obviously. What's the next step that you need to do, so that the next time you're here you have more success?
COACH MORRILL: Get a better draw.
(Laughter.)
Get a better draw. Don't play a team as good as Texas A&M. Get a better seed maybe, who knows. I just don't think, I think we're searching for this and that and we're just not giving Texas A&M the credit that they deserve.
Texas A&M dominated the basketball game, they're bigger, they're stronger, you gain no advantage in terms of character, because they're high character, just like us. If you watch the game, you could see the domination by their athletes and their length and we would have had to really have an excellent shooting night. I'm not trying to make excuses, I'm just trying to give them the credit they deserve. They are good.
I see them very capably advancing in this tournament. And we would have had to have just a banner shooting night. We would have had to make some tough shots and some open shots and we didn't either. We didn't make tough shots, we didn't make open shots. Jared had a really tough night, credit to their defense, and he also had a tough night. We didn't have a -- when we shoot 38 percent and 25 percent from three, it's tough to win. And that again is their defense.
Q. You don't play anybody like that throughout the year in conference play, so how do you try to develop that kind of exposure to players to that kind of an atmosphere because obviously they were a very good team you played tonight.
COACH MORRILL: We won 27 games and I guess if we could get Duke to play us home and home that would be good. That would probably help us. You schedule the best people you can. You schedule and we work constantly at scheduling. I get a bad rap sometimes for scheduling and I'm not near as stubborn or flexible as people think. We try and get as good opponents as we can. We got a great home court. We were 6-2 on the road in league, so to -- it's just -- everybody wants more, including me. We all want to win in the NCAAs. But we got beat by a better team today. They're better than us. Let's be honest. They're better than us.
Q. You touched upon this briefly, but Coach Turgeon talked about how if it wasn't for Texas losing in overtime last night then the Big-12 would be undefeated in the NCAAs so far. What did their performance today say about how good that league is?
COACH MORRILL: From what I saw of it today, it's a pretty awesome league. When I sit and watched in preparing for Texas A&M, when I watched them without Dash lead the number one team in the country, Kansas, for what, Three-fourths of the game? That made gulp a little bit. It made you realize that these guys are legit. I mean everybody talks about every team's weaknesses, but they got far more strengths than they have weaknesses. And I think that when you look at what happened with the Big East in the tournament, it's very safe to say the Big-12 is the best conference in the country. That's what the RPI says. That's what the NCAA tournament says right now. So it's probably true.
THE MODERATOR: All right, thanks, coach.
COACH MORRILL: Thanks.
