2016 Tire Pros Invitational, Thursday, November 17, 2016 – Post-Game Quotes – Xavier 83. Missouri 82 (overtime)

Xavier Head Coach Chris Mack – “I give Missouri a lot of credit. I don’t think we played very well. I don’t think defensively or offensively we played very fluid the entire game. Consequently we were in a one-possession game and it could have gone either way. We have to hurry up and grow up from this. Again, it beats losing.

“Whatever we want it to be, whatever we make up our minds for it to be in terms of a springboard. We have to take ownership of things we’re not doing very well on both ends of the floor.

“I know free throw shooting is going to be every Xavier fan’s concern. I really don’t care. My concern is our offensive execution, defensively being able to keep the ball out of the lane and not fouling so much.

“J.P. does a tremendous job of competing to win. He plays to win, sometimes I’ve got to rein him in a little bit but he has a nose for the ball, he understands time and score and puts himself in position to make hustle plays, plays that determine the game. It doesn’t surprise me that he called timeout that quickly.

“We took some hurried shots. I told these guys in the locker room our offense has to be more than just making shots. We’ve got to be able to generate better shots for every guy on the team, whether it’s inside guys or perimeter players. We didn’t have a very good feel for it.

“I don’t think it’s very difficult to get locked in and play Clemson. From what I saw they were drilling Davidson. They’ve got arguably one of the best players in the country in (Jaron) Blossomgame and I don’t know much about them. It’s my job to figure it out over the next 24 hours or so but it shouldn’t be too hard to captivate our attention based on the way we played and based on the way Clemson played.”

Xavier guard J.P. Macura – “There were a few seconds left so I decided to call a timeout because I didn’t want to just fire up a half-court shot. I thought we’d have better chances of making a shot if we got a timeout.”

Xavier RaShid Gaston – “I think we’ve just got to have a short-term memory. Obviously we’re happy to get the win but it’s basically like Coach said, we have to take ownership of the things we need to work on and just improve on them before tomorrow’s game against Clemson.”

Missouri Head Coach Kim Anderson – “I thought we fought all the way to the end. You’ve got to give Xavier credit. They made the plays down the stretch but I was real proud of our guys the way they responded to runs and the way they kept themselves in the game and really had a chance to win.

(On the last foul) “You always teach your kids to be aggressive. I think he (Terrence Phillips) was just being aggressive. I’m sure he’d love to take it back but you know what? He made a lot of great plays to get us to where we were. If it wasn’t for that it wouldn’t have come down to that play. You know how that goes.

“I thought we played better today. Frankie Hughes is a freshman so he tends to have some streaks but he’s a guy who can shoot the ball. Terrence played really well, did a lot of good things. Cullen VanLeer didn’t get many shots off but he’s a guy that’s pretty steady, knows where to be, does a good job defensively.

“The biggest challenge now is to come back in less than 24 hours and play another game. I’d rather have that than be a football coach and have a week to talk about it. It’ll be over in a few hours because we’ll be talking about Davidson. Hopefully that will help us get going again.

“I don’t know if I’d say we had them on the ropes but we were certainly in a position to win the game at times. That’s a good basketball team and certainly youth figures into it for us. I thought we made some good plays but unfortunately there were a couple of plays toward the end that weren’t good.”