Sunday, November 20, 2016 Post-Game Quotes – Oklahoma 68, Clemson 60

Oklahoma Head Coach Lon Kruger – “A good win. It’s hard to get this type of experience from practice so to do what we did to build the lead and kind of hang on late is great experience for our guys. Clemson dictated to us on the boards and made it difficult down the stretch but I’m happy for our guys. They hung in and found a way to win.

“I liked our guys’ response from the disappointment on Friday, having the big lead on Northern Iowa then losing in overtime. They practiced well, they watched the video, they wanted to get back and play and they opened with good energy and we took the fight to them early. It was a good response for sure.

“It seemed like our turnovers didn’t hurt us as badly as theirs did. Their turnovers were converted in transition where ours weren’t as frequently. It’s always nice to get points off your defense and we did a good job of that.

Oklahoma guard Jordan Woodard – “We did a good job of making shots in the second half, Christian (James) made some big shots. On defense, Coach was preaching to us to protect the bucket It’s a little easier when you’ve got Khadeem (Lattin) down there but he was in foul trouble so the guards had to get back there and grab some rebounds so it was a collective effort.”

Oklahoma guard Christian James – “We lost a lot of seniors from last year and Coach is looking for somebody to step up and make plays like that. I just took what the offense gave me and it felt good when it left my hands. We just kept fighting and kept getting stops on the defense end and we made shots.”

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell – “Give Coach (Lon) Kruger and their team a lot of credit bouncing back the way they after a tough loss the other day. Extremely disappointed with our performance. We were out of sorts from the beginning. We ran some actions wrong right from the start, there was just something wrong in terms of our focus. We didn’t execute what we wanted to do and Oklahoma gained a lot of confidence through the early part of the game. We battled a little bit there at the end and tried a little harder and played a little bit better in the second half but our efficiency was problematic.

“We have some guys who can score but they need to understand on days when they don’t shoot it well, you’d better have other ways to impact the game and we didn’t do that.

“Jaron’s clearly our leader and he was the guy who gave us a huge spark in the second half. It was good to see him get going and play like a tremendous talent. That helped give us some direction but we had some guys have some bad shooting nights tonight.

“This was good for us. We played really good competition and we got exposed for some things. We learned some good things about our team over the first four games but we also learned some things that aren’t as good. Sometimes you need that. You hate to understand that or be that to learn.