Nate Oats discusses defeating the Mississippi State Bulldogs 99-67

Transcript

00:00 We've been asking our guys to come out and try to put 40 minutes of both sides of the ball together.

00:07 That's been the closest we've come. This is a tough team. Mississippi State's, they've been out rebounding twice all year.

00:15 That was one of them. We challenged our guys after the rebound in the block, all that Georgia.

00:21 It was awful at Georgia. Bounced back, we did a great job.

00:26 It would help. We went to Ybate, I thought, played really well against Mississippi State at that place.

00:32 Getting them almost 20 minutes of lettuce and rebounding.

00:36 We were one rebound away from a double-double.

00:39 I thought that's the best game he's probably played. He's getting more comfortable.

00:43 He's getting tougher. Playing spacing big like Grant at the 5 helps us be able to play Ybate a little bit more.

00:51 He's helping us. We challenged our guys. I thought we were a little soft at Georgia with the rebounds, defense, the start to the game.

01:03 I think they answered that pretty well. We rechart those with the calling points.

01:07 I respect Mississippi State much as they win this league.

01:11 I coached against Coach James back in the MAAC. He's always had one of the hardest playing teams in this league.

01:18 They still do. They're a little banged up. TJ didn't play in the second half.

01:24 I thought for a tough, hard-nosed, blue-collar team like Mississippi State, we did great.

01:32 We almost doubled them. We rechart the calling points.

01:35 We had us for almost 120, 118 and a half. They had 64.

01:40 Ybate won the hard hat. I thought he's tough, physical, hard-nosed. I thought he played really well.

01:47 For a game where we didn't shoot particularly great, we didn't shoot it awful, but we didn't shoot it great from three,

01:54 we were able to get to the free throw line hardly at all.

01:57 We got one point in the second half. I think we played in the second half and taken one free throw.

02:02 For not shooting it great and really not getting the line, we made a lot of other things go well.

02:09 Some second chance points, turning them over more than we've been turning people over.

02:14 We ended up with 27 points off turnovers. I thought a lot of that was effort.

02:19 We're getting our guys to play a little bit more aggressive on D, play harder, be more assertive.

02:24 I think this is a really compliant group. We make points that we need to improve on.

02:31 They've done a pretty good job improving on it.

02:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]