Feb. 17, 2007

Recap |
Final Stats |
Notes

Columbia, S.C. –

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USC Head Coach Dave Odom

“That was the most complete game that we’ve played against SEC competition.”

“We had a decent lead, a decent working margin, then I thought we went to sleep for about 2-3 minutes there [at around the seven minute mark of the first half], and they went on something like a 9-0 run. It was made possible because we quit rebounding the ball, we took at least 3, [ill-advised] shots, and we let them get to the rim on us.”

“We talked about playing some zone at half time, trying to mix it up a little bit; mainly because we have been wearing down in the latter stages of a lot of games. I was thinking that maybe if we forced them to the outside, hopefully they wouldn’t make shots.”

“[The zone] seemed to work pretty well because we were able to extend our zone out.”

“You never rest easy with Tennessee because they can turn the pressure up quickly, get some turnovers quickly, and convert them into three-point shots.”

“Tre’ [Kelley] had an outstanding day offensively controlling the ball, controlling the tempo of the game.”

“Brandon [Wallace] had another really good game. That was one of the real keys, because we did not play good post defense in the first game with Tennessee in Knoxville. Today I thought our post defense was much, much better.”

“Maybe the biggest, much needed surprise was Brandis [Raley-Ross]. It was good to see him break ice again, hopefully that will parlay into some more open jumpers and fewer turnovers and more confidence from him. That will certainly help our basketball team.”

USC Players

Bryce Sheldon

“It’s a huge weight off our shoulders. It defiantly was a team effort.”

“Coach has been telling us to not only make the Colonial Center our house, but to make it our home and we did that today and we came out with a huge win.”

“We’ve practiced hard and we finally just started making the shots, and got a great win.”

“Yeah I wanted to guard him. I just tried to get him off balance and keep him guessing. The rest of the team did really well when we switched, it just worked out well today.”

Tre Kelley

“We needed this bad as you need a win, especially to change our confidence level and that’s exactly what it did. We made shots and when we came out in the second half, our confidence was really high.”

“The fans are always here and if we give them a reason to cheer, they will. They’ve supported us this far and hopefully we will give them a few more reasons to cheer for us.”

Tennessee Head Coach Bruce Pearl

“You hope you learn from it some so that we can improve on the future because how many times do you come out of games surprised? How many times do you go, `What happened?’ So my first reaction is if that’s what it takes to get a technical foul, I’ll have to look and see what the standard is.”

“We just had no energy, and South Carolina played four guys a lot of minutes. It was a classic match-up for us to try to wear them down, but we weren’t able to do it. We just didn’t handle Tre’ Kelley and their ball screen action.”

“When you lose a game like this, put it on me. I did not do a good job preparing my basketball team, didn’t do a good job coaching the game and didn’t do a good job making adjustments.”