Nov. 16, 2011

2011 Progressive CBE Classic
Notre Dame vs. Sam Houston State
November 16, 2011
Sam Houston Quotes

Sam Houston Head Coach Jason Hooten

On Notre Dame’s run in the first half…
“I think it was 22-2. My perspective on it was that it was not very good. We were not very good tonight either. We have a new group. We are not nearly as good as we were last year yet or the year before that. We have a lot to work on. First of all, Coach Brey does a great job as coach. He was really good getting in that zone. They are not a zone team. I am an old school guy. I was taught by an old school coach. We don’t run zone and if you don’t run zone every day in practice, you don’t guard it and it doesn’t guard you. I think the reason he got in it was because his point guard was out. It was a good coaching move. I would like to say it was a bad coaching move by me, but it was not.”

On Pat Connaughton’s explosion…
“I knew he was the player of the year in Massachusetts with high acclaim. Statistically, all you can go by is two of the first games of the year and he was 1-4 from three for the year. Number 12 was 0-4. I told our guys that they could shoot it. We knew they could shoot it. You just hope that it isn’t against you, but again, that was our fault. We didn’t get out to them fast enough.”

On Steven Werner going down early with foul trouble…
“I told myself on the way over here that I was not going to talk about that, but you see I coach in a conference that is not high, major, or big time like the one Notre Dame plays in, so I can talk about the referees. I have coached for 18 years and I have never seen two guys with seven fouls amongst them in the first half. It doesn’t matter. You cannot complain when you get yourself beaten by 33 points, but I feel like that started the game off for us in a weird way. I have three big guys and two of them have seven fouls.”

On his takeaway from the game…
“It is a good trip for us and it will make us a better team when it is all said and done.”

Marcus James – Senior – Forward

On Notre Dame’s defensive effort… “Notre Dame played really physical tonight, and ran a lot of a 2-3 zone. They made it tough for us to finish at the basket, and I had a tough time myself making lay-ups in the first half. We weren’t hitting very well from the three-point line, and they were getting out there and packing the lane tonight, so we had a hard time getting penetration and passing. It was kind of tough to run our offense, but we just have to fight through it keep playing hard.”

On what improvements the team needs to make… “We need to work on our offense and staying poised when things get a little bit rugged. That’s really it. We need to work on defense and keep getting better on our rebounding.”

On outrebounding Notre Dame… “We wanted to focus on boxing out their big guys. When a shot goes up, we just need to get in good position. When a team shoots 53 percent, there aren’t really that many rebounds. What we needed to do was just stick to the game plan early.”