Nate Oats gives his thoughts on beating Missouri to stay unbeaten in conference play

Transcript

00:00 Get into the actual game, Missouri gave us everything we could handle.

00:05 I thought the way they closed the first half,

00:08 it was great on their part, it wasn't very good on our part.

00:13 We had too many turnovers, we've had issues with our starts to games.

00:17 I didn't think our start was great tonight.

00:19 I don't think we got stopped to the last possession of the first four

00:24 minutes before the under 16 media timeout.

00:27 Then they closed the half, I think they went on a big run,

00:31 I think it was 12-3 if I remember right, the last four minutes.

00:36 So, started the second half, we were a little better.

00:39 But I did think the one issue that we've had major problems with this year,

00:44 how we play at the under 12 and under eight of the second half,

00:48 we were significantly better.

00:50 So we've had issues, we've had leads in four of our five losses,

00:56 leads of six points or more in the second half.

00:58 So I thought we did a good job closing this thing.

01:02 You can look at some of the guys that were on the floor,

01:05 Ryland obviously went on that three point barrage, which was huge.

01:07 But I thought he's been one of our best defenders all year.

01:10 Aaron's been one of our best defenders.

01:13 Trelly, been one of our best perimeter defenders.

01:16 And then Grant, and then Nick was playing well tonight.

01:19 He might not have showed up necessarily with,

01:22 he ended up with ten points and three rebounds.

01:25 So statistically, it didn't look like great, but he played a lot of minutes.

01:29 Stayed out of foul trouble, for him to play 27 minutes only in one foul,

01:33 I thought was great.

01:34 He impacted shots at the rim and did a good job for us.

01:37 So, they closed the game, did a really good job.

01:41 Mark tweaked his ankle in the first half, fought through it,

01:46 made some buckets for us early in the second half.

01:48 And with us, tried to give him a little rest there at the under eight.

01:52 The second half, then we kinda went on a run, just kept him up,

01:56 tried to rest his ankle, make sure he's ready to go Saturday at Tennessee.

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