Notable quotes from Nebrasketball’s 83-61 victory over Sacramento State.
Head coach Tim Miles on the experience of his younger players:
“At the beginning of the year, I met with our sophomores. We had a team meeting and I met with our sophomores. You know, there’s the old adage if you’ve ever been around athletics, when you coach freshman, at the semester break the old coach says, ‘Oh, you’re not freshman anymore. Now you’re sophomores’ or whatever. And I told the guys, I said, ‘Listen, you four sophomores have logged more minutes than a lot of juniors in major basketball and I expect you to play like veterans and I think that’s what we saw tonight. We saw a lot of development from those guys and we saw excellent play and I thought the second half was pretty good, but they were pretty good early too.”
On his message to the team at halftime:
“It was more that we set the tone early [and then] we were just rushing on offense. There was no poise. You know, it was one-two passes and force your way in there. And the reason we missed 12 shots was because they weren’t very good shots, you know? You can’t get an offensive rebound, puke on yourself and put it back in there. You have to have some poise, some balance, some aggressiveness. I just think I wasn’t pleased with the fact that we were … it just seemed like were were playing mindless basketball. I didn’t see the poise I expected.”
Glynn Watson Jr. on what he did to allow himself to match his career high of 17 points in 14 minutes:
“I just shot to play aggressive and execute our game plan. That’s basically what I tried to do to be aggressive and get my teammates open. I had open shots so I took them and that’s basically it.”
Tai Webster on the team’s first-game jitters:
“There’s always nerves. For a lot of guys, this is their first [time out], especially for the freshman and transfers and what not. We had Anton [Gill] coming in. You know, we had a lot of nerves on the team. I mean, I think second half we shook them off and got back to work.”
On the difference from the first half to the second half:
“Coach got on us in the locker room and I feel like every guy in the locker room took it personally to take on the challenge and pick up the standard.”
Jack McVeigh on his perimeter shooting:
“It’s a long season so there’s a lot of shots to be taken but also, I’m getting open looks from [Webster and Watson]. You know, you saw in the game they were drawing so much attention that they just forgot me in the corner sort of thing. These guys gave me easy looks and all I’ve got to do is make the shot.”
“We’ve seen it a little bit in the last like, you know … since we’ve all noticed a difference of him being healthy especially, and it showed out there. Difference in a healthy dude and one that is hurting a little bit.”
Erin is the Deputy Editor and Digital Marketing Strategist for Hail Varsity. She has covered Nebraska athletics since 2012, which has included stops at Bleacher Report, Cox Media Group’s Land of 10, and even Hail Varsity (previously from 2012-2017). She has also been featured on the Big Ten Network, NET’s Big Red Wrap-Up, and a varsity of radio shows nationwide. When not covering the Huskers, Erin is probably at Chipotle.
