UTEP final

Here are some postgame quotes from Marvin Menzies, Tony Barbee and Stefon Jackson. Overall I thought this year's series is better for the Aggies than the Miners. Despite not shooting well, the Aggies were in the game until about midway through the second half after beating UTEP handily in Las Cruces with a young team. UTEP meanwhile, couldn't put away a young team until the second half at home and they play in Conference USA while the Aggies will have an opportunity to compete for a conference championship.


Marvin Menzies
“It was one of those games you try to warn your guys on being patient and doing the same things that gave you the ‘W’ the first time around but emotion got the best of them. I don’t think he (UTEP coach Tony Barbee) gave us enough credit last time but that’s my boy. I’m going to give them their credit. I think they played very well and did a great job taking us out of our comfort zone with their pressure.”

“Hamidu only got seven attempts. He had more touches because he was good from the foul line, but still, you have to ride that thing. We started taking quick shots early the possession, no reversal. Just very uncharacteristic of my guys and I have to attribute it to emotion and letting it take the best of them.”

“Five technicals in the game is a lot of technicals. It just goes to show you that the rivalry is real and no matter how calm and no matter how much of a gameplan me and Tony had going into this thing, the kids were going to decide it and I have to do a better job of getting them to understand how they have to be patient. We just couldn’t find any rhythm. With freshmen, you have those woes and we have sophomores who are still learning.”

“Every game behind you is irrelevant. They will talk about it after the season that we split and talk about the rivalry, but when you are in season, you have to embrace the process. Right now the process has us preparing for New Mexico. They will bounce back just like UTEP did against us after the first game.”
“We took bad shots. Our guards took very ill-advised shots and did not play within the system and that attributed to the low shooting percentage that we had.”

“We were trying to get it all back too quick and that was another part of the problem. When you get down and you have young kids, they don’t understand the time management situation but we will get it. I’m not too worried about it.”

“I was following it and one of the refs came over and told me there was a double-technical. I think they were just mouthing off and like I said, the rivalry has a lot of emotion involved in it and they were probably just jawing at each other like kids do and it was one of those things. We got in a slugfest and we lost.”



Tony Barbee
“Randy couldn’t keep his emotions in check. He got the first technical for taunting after the dunk which was warranted. He dunked the ball and he yelled in the guy’s face. The refs wanted to get a handle on the game early because of what happened pre-game, not from my team, but what happened pre-game. In the tunnel, I didn’t exactly see what was happening. They explained it to me that there was some jawing going back and forth between Randy and the other guy (McKines) who they gave the double-technical to. (Culpepper’s) second technical and he was out. Disappointed that that was the decision they made but you have live with it.”

Stefon Jackson
“It was emotion. Two good teams going head to head. As coach said there was a lot of emotion and a lot of intensity and just two good teams getting ready for a big game.”

“It was a big game because it was the next game on our schedule so that had no effect on us coming out and playing the way we did. Up there we didn’t come out with enough intensity. Coach always talks about us making the other team match our intensity and we didn’t do that before. Anytime where you try to match a team’s intensity you are going to go down and that’s what we did up there.”

“NMSU is a great team. Good guard orientated team. I’m going to miss the rivalry games against NMSU. It was a good time in my four years playing against them.”
“We just executed more in the zone this time than last time. Last time, a couple guys didn’t know the offensive plays against the zone and that kind of affected us a little bit but as we have been going through practice, we knew New Mexico State would play us all zone and guys got used to it.”