Dec. 31, 2014
Tulsa head coach Frank Haith
"Great win. I thought our guys showed great toughness in a win on the road, particularly on a night when we didn't shoot the ball well. Obviously from the three; we were two-for-15 from three. We're not a great shooting team, but we are better than that. With the way the game flowed, we showed great resolve. We got 40 points in the paint but we only went to the line 10 times, so you had to play through some stuff. We showed great resolve and great toughness to compete and win."
On the early lead...
"Our activity was really good early. I thought we were in control of the game, made a lot of big plays in terms of defense. I think we ended up with seven steals in the game. We didn't turn the ball over; that was key. We got FGAs (field goal attempts). We took 63 shots and took 14 more shots than (UCF). When you're not a great shooting team, that's what you want. We got 12 offensive rebounds and I thought that was key for us when you're having a night that you're not shooting the ball well."
On what UCF did differently during their second half run...
"They made some shots. I thought we did a good job on (Justin McBride) in the second half. He only had two points in the second half. They made some shots, but it was more about what we didn't do. We missed a lot of shots around the basket and I thought we got a little tight with our shooting and allowed them to get back in it."
UCF head coach Donnie Jones
"We didn't get what we wanted, absolutely. We worried that they could go zone or man. We knew they had done both. We tried to draw up a plan where we had Justin (McBride) screening for (Adonys Henriquez) to get him out top with the ball and then get Justin into another screen, space it and play. Regardless, man or zone, it didn't matter what they were in, we wanted AD to have the ball since he's taller to make a play for BJ and those guys because they were switching pick-and-rolls. Right when they saw zone, Dequan kept the ball. With young guys, sometimes we don't know what they're going to do until they get in situations."
"We challenged them at halftime and I thought they responded the right way. We put ourselves in the situation to win the game. We played two bigs in there, which I thought was effective for us. First time we've done that. Playing zone, we were able to rebound the ball and be able to get some stops. I thought it opened some things up for our guards to be able to score better in the second half. They were just doing a lot of switching in the first half, which confused our young guys. No matter how much you practice that, when you get in the game, it's a little different sometimes. These kids will get better. They showed some great heart tonight. There's some good things we'll take away from and learn from it. They realized in conference play you can't come out with that kind of start. You've got to have two halves together to be able to beat a good team like Tulsa."
UCF freshman Adonys Henriquez
On the resiliency of the team in the second half...
"We just turned the ball over. I just feel like if we had limited our turnovers, we could have beaten them by 10."
On Tulsa playing zone at the end...
"We thought they were going to come out in man and we had a man play. It could have been run for zone, but we just didn't execute it. We fell away from our plan."
On if he was surprised at the early deficit...
"Yeah, a little bit. I just feel like we did it to ourselves. We just handed them the ball and transition (defense), they just kept scoring, scoring, scoring off our turnovers. We just have to take care of the ball. Everybody just has to step up."
UCF sophomore Justin McBride
On the last play...
"We just broke down. That was the biggest thing, we just broke down. Coach drew up the play and a couple of guys missed their assignments. We're still working on the little things, as is every team in the country right now starting out conference. It's a process. It's a marathon, not a sprint. We're going to bounce back, but we should've executed and we didn't. We fell short this time."
On what positives come out of the loss...
"The positives; I think we made three big threes in a row. We've got to limit the small things. The scoring, the playing defense, we pretty much took care of those in the second half. But if we can limit turnovers and mental errors, executing when we have to and those little things, the sky is the limit. I'm bummed out about the loss, of course. Any competitor would be, but I'm excited to see us put two halves together. We could really make some noise in this conference."