What Missouri coach Dennis Gates said about No. 5 Tennessee after 72-67 loss to the Vols

What Missouri coach Dennis Gates said during his postgame press conference about No. 5 Tennessee after Mizzou lost 72-67 to the Vols Tuesday night at Mizzou Arena in Columbia:

Opening Statement 

“What a great, great team we played tonight. Unbelievable team. I think Rick Barnes’s best team he’s ever had. They’re well balanced. They have everything you need. That’s characteristics of a national championship team. They have inside play, they have depth, they have shooting, they have a potential national player of the year, great point guard, assist-to-turnover ratio and they have veterans. So when you look at their program, you look at where they are compared to last year, they’re healthy, right? 

“I think Zakai Zeigler, his injury last season impacted their progress in the tournament, but they’re healthy now and they’re doing a great job. Our guys played hard. They played really, really hard, especially in that first half. Thought the second half when you saw that basketball go in, and we knew Dalton Knecht was going to come out and make some shots, and he made some tough ones. I thought our guys got discouraged at that point and we’ve got to do a better job of not fouling.” 

Tennessee going to a lineup with two forwards in the second half

“They had to put Tobe (Awaka) back in the game because of what he did in that first half. He was the spark. I think he had eight points at that point, but he also had five rebounds. He was just picking up different loose balls around the area, dump-offs, dunks. He didn’t do anything outside the lane, but he did do things inside of it and Jonas (Aidoo) did the same thing. They got some easy baskets. But again, the big picture of it all was our inability (to draw fouls). We’ve got to do a better job drawing fouls. I think we suck at it. We’re f**cking terrible. We’re terrible at drawing fouls and we got to do a better job. Y’all can write that in there, right? Make sure you don’t bleep that out.”

If Tennessee playing with two forwards opened up the floor for Dalton Knecht on the perimeter

“No … in that second half he basically made some tough shots. When you look at the difficulty of the shots that he took, our guys’ hands were right there. It just didn’t go in in the first half. I thought we did a better job of contesting passes that led to the accuracy of where the catches were. Some of them was off the dribble, but those catch-and-shoot or those threes that he had, I thought he was in rhythm. Like a great player, he is going to make the make the right plays.”

Missouri missing its first 11 shots from the floor and not panicking

“We talked about it. We said if our offense wasn’t there that the defense has to pick up even (more), it’s got to multiply. So if we weren’t making shots, we weren’t going let them make shots. And that’s kind of what our mindset was. Wasn’t expecting it to go that long. I think the score was 2-1 for, I mean, at least to the first media and a little bit after that. But it was just about getting our defense together and if we’re not scoring, we can’t let them score.”

The challenge of containing a player like Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht 

“He’s SEC Player of the Year. At least he has my vote. That’s what he is. And when you have an SEC Player of the Year candidate, a guy that there is not even close in my eyes of what he’s been able to do for his team. You look at how important he is to that team. I don’t know, outside of unbelievable point guard play at Alabama (Mark Sears), those two guys are some great, great players who are able to get to that foul line, but also they’re able to score baskets when their team needs it. 

“They didn’t run plays. I think we did a great job taking them out of sets. But when you have a guy that can score at all three levels, which is what he did, and then the explosion that he was able to do that with the strength and the balance, he was able to do that with. He did a good job rebounding the ball, but also driving, drawing fouls. And our guys did a great job throughout the game. I don’t know the overall stat, but at 6-for-16, he was 3-for-6 from three, our guys did a good job.”