courtesy of Jack Alden

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"Going into the game, we wanted to make our big men important. We felt that with Nick and Drew and Wayne and Jeff that we should get some scoring inside from them. We really talked to them about getting as low as they possibly could, about us getting the ball to them, and about them aggressively asking for the ball, and I think we did that for the most part. We even did a good job of it the second half. "The second half, we just couldn't get the ball to stay in the basket. We shot 30% in the second half. We haven't had any half like that this entire season. Drew was 7-10 at the half. In the second half he had just as good shots all the way around the basket, but just couldn't get it to go down. Their defense had something to do with that because they are very scrappy. They're tough, they get after everything. But we just couldn't get the ball to go in the hole in the second half. Still, we did some very good things against a very good basketball team, and feel very good about winning. "They shot 20-25 from the free throw line for 80%. We were 29-36 for 80.6%. I felt good all the time about out ability to shoot the ball. Defensively I thought we did some nice things in the second half. In the first half, we didn't finish the defense. We gave them 12 points on offensive rebounds to our two on offensive rebounds because we didn't finish the defense and box out and get the rebounds. The second half I thought we were better defensively, yet they made a couple of big-time threes against us. We were trying to stop the dribble penetration, but we messed up a couple of times even getting the right guy picked up. But you still have to congratulate them because they made some great shots. "We do depend on Kirk to make big plays down the stretch. We called a set play, and he was able to break it off and make his own play off of it, because they did a good job of covering our post guy. That was one score. Then we get a steal at the other end and he comes back again. But we've got to have a better job from our guards. Kirk's assist-to-error ratio is 8-5 and Aaron's is 6-6. We can't have those kind of things in the Big 12 and be successful. "They're (Tulsa) making a theme for themselves about not getting any respect, and I think it's true. They don't get the respect they should. But if they keep winning they're gonna get it because they're gonna make people do it. John does a heck of a job. He's a guy that I've liked for a long, long time. "We've got to be more effective offensively. Turning it over like we did in the second half, and not finishing the plays and putting the ball in the basket wasn't very good for us."

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