2017 Wooden Legacy post-game notes & quotes, Georgia 83, Saint Mary’s 81 (overtime)

Wooden Chips

• Teams played an overtime game for the seventh time in this tournament (third as Wooden Legacy)… the last OT game was in 2015 between Arizona and Santa Clara.
• Saint Mary’s Jock Landale set a tournament record with 16 FGM, besting the old mark shared by Arizona State’s James Harden in 2008 and Portland’s Alec Wintering in 2016… his 33 points is the fourth most ever scored in the Wooden Legacy.
• Saint Mary’s Jock Landale recorded a double-double with 33 points and 12 rebounds, which is the third double-double of this year’s tournament, and is the most points ever scored in a double-double game in this tournament’s history.
• Saint Mary’s tied all-time tournament lows in two categories at the stripe… the three free throws made as well as the six free throws attempted were both equal to the all-time lows.

Georgia (5-1)
• Playing in its third ESPN event (4-5 record in those).
• Georgia had lost four of its previous six OT games.
• Yante Maten scored 16 points to go with seven rebounds… he has scored at least 15 points in all five games this season… in addition, he went 2-2 from the stripe today, and is now 39-40 FT (.975) this year.
• Tyree Crump scored a career high 17 points today… for the season he has made eight 3pt-FGs and three two-point FGs.
• Georgia won despite allowing a team to shoot 50% FG, making this just the third such win in the last 21 times that has happened since the start of the 2010-11 season.

Saint Mary’s (5-2)
• Playing in its fifth ESPN event (6-9 record in those)… the Gaels are now 4-5 in Wooden Legacy games.
• Saint Mary’s had a winning streak of 64 games when shooting at least 50% FG (last loss was 12/23/13 at Hawai’i) before the last two games, both of which were losses despite shooting over 50%… still, Saint Mary’s has shot at least 50% FG in six of its seven games this season.
• Saint Mary’s had won its last six overtime games prior to today, with its last loss coming in Feb. 2011 to Gonzaga.
• Defensively, Saint Mary’s allowed consecutive teams to shoot at least 50% FG for the first time since Feb. 2014 (three straight teams did it then).
• Emmett Naar, who played all 45 minutes, scored 21 points to go with nine assists… this marked the second straight game the Gaels lost when he has at least seven assists (now 33-4)… he has scored in double digits all six games this season and over 20 points for the seventh time in his career.

Georgia Head Coach Mark Fox:
(Opening statement) – “That obviously was a very well played game by both teams. I think Saint Mary’s has a terrific basketball team and everyone saw that a year again and will see it throughout the remaining part of this year. Our team understood that we would have to play at a very high level to win the game and fortunately we were able to do that and sustain a pretty good level of play to beat an excellent Saint Mary’s team and very well coached team.”

(On Tyree Crump’s performance) – “Tyree Crump has started the year shooting to ball very well but he’s a great shooter… Tyree is just a beautiful kid and we actually had a play called for him but he got an open three at the same spot on the fastbreak so he made that one and then we stayed with the call and he got his second one right there in the same spot and then once he made a couple in a row I thought he might have a pretty good ball game.”

(On having five players in double figures) – “Well Saint Mary’s is so good we had to keep trying to find different places to score and fortunately we had a lot of guys finish some plays. I thought Derek Ogbeide had a nice ball game, Yante Maten was typical, we know he usually shows up and I thought Tyree (Crump) and Turtle Jackson (William Jackson II) those guys all contributed and that balance was really key for us to play a complete game.”

(On how this tournament has impacted the team) – “We’ve had 11 players get hit with the stomach flu since the end of the first game so for our team to battle through that, even tonight, both our top two point guards were back in the locker getting sick in the first half. For our team to battle through that and beat such a good opponent and leave here with a true road victory against Fullerton and then a top-50 win against Saint Mary’s, this trip has ended up being very good for our team.”

Georgia sophomore guard Tyree Crump:
(On his performance) – “I wasn’t really feeling it in the first half and in the second half coach Fox looked at me and said ‘are you ready?’ I said ‘yes sir.’ Then he gave me that look and he kissed me, he gave me a kiss in the huddle and he said ‘you better make this shot.’ I finally hit one and then after that I saw a big basket and it was on from there.”

(On how big of a win this was for the team) – “That says a lot about my team, if it wasn’t for my team we couldn’t do it. Like coach said before, in the summer we been through tougher things than that, only the strong survive so we had to bounce back and we bounced back. If you want to compete, you’ll saddle up and go out there and compete and that’s what we did.”

Saint Mary’s Head Coach Randy Bennett
(On the offense) – They didn’t help from outside the line today. We relied on Emmet (Naar) and Jock (Landale) to score and played 2-on-2 offense.

(On the defensive effort) – We have miles to go defensively. We have some practice time so we’ll work on it this week. We gotta get better defensively because we’re way high on opposing team’s field goal percentages. It’s seven games into the season and we’re allowing opponents 50 percent shooting from the field which has to make us one of the worst in the country. We have to get better whether we play at home or away it doesn’t matter who we play. We were one of the best last year, but this year is a drastic change. We can’t keeping letting teams back into the game. We’re one of the best offensive teams in the country but defensively we’re not even close. I can break down the team, personnel, but it’s all going to lead back to our defense.

(On having a few days to practice before the next game) – We haven’t had much practice time, playing seven games in fifteen days. We’ve been leaking oil defensively as the season gets going. We can’t practice hard since we just played two games and Emmett Naar is averaging 40 minutes a game right now. We need some good practice time and I think we’ll improve when we get some of that. We shouldn’t be bad, we have some good personnel that can defend. I need to do a better job with that.

(On the players focus during the tournament) – This tournament has been good for us to play. Our guys have been good, it’s important that other teams respect you when they play them, we’ve been dealing with that for a long time. Last year we were ranked every week during the season. This group is pretty mature and has good leadership. This tournament was good for us because we played some pretty good teams. Harvard is good and Washington (State) is pretty good, they can score really well. Georgia is pretty good as well, they have some good players. We played some good teams and it’s good for us to find out where we are right now. We’ll make the adjustments and get better. I don’t say we need a wakeup call since our guys are pretty good about knowing where they need to be right now. This tournament has showed that we need to pay attention to our defense and our rebounding. We’re not good in either of those areas right now and we were good in those areas last year with a lot of the same guys. I have to do a good job getting the right personnel on the floor and getting the message across teaching how we need to be defending.”