Mizzou Basketball 13-14

Mizzou Links, 3-19-14: DANNY FELDMANN EDITION

Missouri comes back to beat Davidson in the NIT first round, Danny Feldmann makes the most of his opportunities, Ben Askren is a nerd, and Mizzou baseball tops Milwaukee.

By Bill Connelly@SBN_BillC Mar 19, 2014, 5:13am CDT

1. Well that was fun and unique...

MUtigers.com: Brown Lifts Missouri over Davidson, 85-77
MUtigers.com: Post Game Quotes

Mizzou Head Coach Frank Haith

Opening Statement...

"First I want to thank the fans that came out tonight, they were outstanding. We truly appreciate that and it means so much to us and our players to have the fans come out and support us; the energy they brought tonight was outstanding and I am forever grateful to them. We play Sunday and we do not know the time; I know it is spring break, but if we can get folks in town out here again it would be really appreciated. I thought our guys competed their butts off. I thought that from start to finish even when we got down 13; we were playing hard. Davidson is a really good ball club and you look at them on tape; they are an outstanding team. They play everybody; they beat Georgia and they took (North) Carolina to overtime. This is a heck of a win for us; it was short-handed so I was so proud of how hard our guys played. This guy right here, our senior (Earnest Ross); he came out and did not play particularly well in the first half, but he was terrific in the second half but it was a team effort; everybody that played contributed."

On how motivated the team was to compete in the NIT and this game...

"It is tremendous because you look around and there are a lot of teams that do not play. I wanted our guys to really compete and we talked about competing. When you have a young team, you have a chance because they understand that we are trying to get better. You can use it as a spring-board, I gave examples to our team of previous teams that have used it like that. You look at Wichita State; you look at Virginia just last year, they were in the NIT last year and now they are the number 1 seed this year. Baylor was in it last year and they won it and now look at what kind of season that they had this year. I think that is important for our guys to understand that we are building for the future right now."

On the bench performance tonight...

"Ryan Rosburg was terrific down the stretch. I trust Ryan. Ryan made some big plays, some big rebounds. Something that fans might not see, and you heard the guys talk about how smart he is, he played the 3 and the 4 and he knows the back line of our zone. The coverage was outstanding between he, J3, and Ryan. They were terrific; we did not give up any slips. Davidson is a smart team and they execute very well, but I thought our execution on that end was terrific; we communicated, we got to the shooters. When you say you play a team that is a 3-point shooting team, you don't play zone, but we were able to get to their shooters and use our length, and Danny is a pretty long guy. Torren got in there and made some plays too; Torren is a developing guy and I think he is only going to get better. "

On Jabari playing well and getting out of his funk...

"If you would have told me, and this is about the maturation of his game, that Jabari had 30 points I would have said he made five or six 3-pointers; but he only made one 3-pointer. That tells you a little bit about him not settling and his ability to finish through contact, his ability to get to the free throw line. I am proud of him, obviously he was terrific tonight, but it was a great team effort. I thought Jordan Clarkson in the second half really executed our offense. They were changing defenses trying to figure out; they were running 1-3-1, went to 2-3-zone, and went man-to-man and he did a much better job in the second half of understanding and getting us in good offense."