QUOTES, Championship Game – Utah State 73, Oklahoma 70

Utah State coach Ryan Odom – “Heck of a basketball game all around, a stressful game in a lot of ways. Oklahoma’s a good team, an extremely well-coached team. It was hard to adjust to their physicality and switching their early on. It really bothered us from on offensive perspective and I thought the story for the game for us was just hanging in there. Oklahoma was forcing us into situations we didn’t want to be in. Credit to our guys for figuring it out at the right moment, credit to our guys for not getting frustrated. Justin was amazing throughout the entire tournament. We said we wanted to come down here and play for a championship and we did. We put our best foot forward and went for it.” (On Bean’s stat line): “He’s like Wilt Chamberlain. It’s crazy. Those shots (by Brock Miller) were huge and that’s what we love about Brock. He’s not afraid, he’s a confident guy. It ended as it should from our perspective. (This tournament) has been tremendous. My parents used to bring us down here once a year so I’m pretty familiar with the area and dad (Dave) coaching at South Carolina for a number of years. We love Myrtle Beach.”

Utah State forward Justin Bean (tournament MVP) – “It was an overall team effort. A lot of guys stepped up big. It was just a battle, it was punch-for-punch. Both teams were throwing them. It was close the entire game. We were mentally tough today. It was the biggest test of the year from that standpoint, just locking in, executing our set, making the right reads, and staying composed. Brock (Miller) obviously hit a couple huge 3s for us down the stretch and we executed from the free throw line. We shot 20 of 21 from the free throw line. Of course, I was the one who missed. I’ve been a Sooners fan growing up my whole life, grew up 10 minutes from campus so this one meant a lot to me.” (Will the former walk-on take a moment to put this in perspective?): “I probably should. Knowing me, I’m usually go-go-go. I don’t usually think things through a lot. Being a senior and having so much respect and love for our guys and knowing how much this meant for them, I’m definitely going to take it in and enjoy and then it’s back to work.”

Oklahoma coach Porter Moser – “Utah State is old, they’re veteran, they’re elite shooters. I don’t know if we’ll see a 6-10 kid (Brandon Horvath) who can shoot it like that, so it puts us in matchup problems. With that said, we’ve got to get better. We’re up six, under 4 minutes and we took three ill-advised 3s in a row. You’ve got to understand time and score and that starts with me. Get used to understanding possessions. That’s the process of new coaches, new players, we’re all together. Haven’t played a lot of games together, but they all want to win. I’m not coaching effort in that locker room. We need guard leadership on the floor. I can’t call timeout; I only had one left and understand we don’t need a 25-footer and then three in a row. I thought we grew a lot. We can’t let this loss go to waste. If you’re coaching a team for many years and you’ve got guys who have been with you, it would have been surprising. There’s so much newness in what we’re doing. I agree, it definitely was definitely an NCAA-like game.” (On Justin Bean): “There are certain guys who know where the ball’s coming off the rim. What he did was he drew a bunch of fouls that got them into the bonus early. He had 19 rebounds, but I think he had two or three that don’t go into the stat sheet as rebounds but goes into drawn fouls. I can’t even put a price tag on the value he had. Unbelievably valuable player and that was the key to the game. This is the first time we’ve traveled together, first time we’ve been in three games in four days and hotels and walk-throughs. It’s a great event. Well run, great place, love Myrtle Beach. Literally there was nothing I didn’t like about the event.”