Everything Matt Cross and Chuck Harris said after SMU beat Cal

The SMU Mustangs took care of business on Wednesday night, beating the Cal Golden Bears 76 -65 and moving to 16-5 on the season.

On the sense of urgency since the Louisville game: [Matt]: “I feel like we just didn’t get too high or too low. We’re an older group, so a lot of us get the ‘seriousness’ of the bigger games, having to pull those out for March Madness bids. So I think we’ve just been going as hard as we can in practice, paying more attention to detail in scout, and wake up, I guess, is all that happened.” 

On stepping up in the paint without Samet: [Matt]: “Yeah, it hurts not to have him because he has a big presence down there on both sides. But we still have other bigs like Jerrell, Yohan, Keon. So I just go about it the same way. I just try to get in there as much as possible. Just sometimes it falls in my hand when the 7’2 guy is not on the court.” 

On what Chuck was feeling on the court: [Chuck]: “Nothing in particular, just letting the game come to me, letting it flow. I felt we had a good flow in the second half. On offense, I wasn’t forcing anything there. Just letting the game come to me.” 

On limiting the Cal guards: [Chuck]: “Well, we knew they were a heavy guard team, so we had a lot of emphasis on that in practice. Just keeping them from getting in the paint. We knew they really weren’t trying to shoot three, we knew they were capable, but that wasn’t really what they were looking to do. And I think we just had great attention to the scout and executed the way we wanted to.” 

On the conversations when things are not going well offensively: [Chuck]: “Well, I think we started the game off pretty flat. But like you said, we’re older guys, kind of experiencing that, so we didn’t get too high or too low. We just kept playing and I think we’ve shown offensively we’re good for 15-point outbursts at any given second. So we just stayed grounded and just let it go.” 

On how the guards adjust without Samet: [Chuck]: “Well, Samet is definitely a big advantage being 7’2 with his skill set. But him not being on the court, I think we looked to play through Matt a little bit more in the post. And then if they show they want to go double him, we have shooters all around the three [point line]. That’s all it means. [It means] better spacing for Matt to get his iso. But I think whatever group is on the court at any given time, we’re pretty comfortable with going to war with that five on the court.” 

On if Cal’s injuries changed the game plan for SMU: [Matt]: “I don’t think so. I think we had the game plan regardless. It does help when they don’t have their starting center in there. But I think at the end of the day, we have our plays that we were prepared to do with him in there. So, without him in there, it probably worked even better.” 

On if Matt thinks teams are focusing on stopping him: [Matt]: “I think sometimes when we get the switch, maybe on smaller guards. But I don’t know, we got a lot of guys on our team. I think you can’t really game-plan for one guy. I mean, if you game plan for one guy, I think it’s shown that anybody can go off. So I mean, if you want to focus all the attention on one or double on one, we got three guards that can go for 20 at any given night and in spurts like that. And we got forwards that can know the rotations and can dominate in the post at any given night. So I don’t think other than maybe they don’t want to force the switch, I don’t think you can really do that with our team.” 

On where the toughness has come from in recent games: [Chuck]: “I think that comes with the conference, the ACC. You have to be ready. I think we’ve grown through that stretch. Obviously, we had some defeats through that, but I think as a team we’ve kind of matured and now we feel pretty battle-tested. There’s not much we haven’t seen at this point in the season.