Coach Slessinger's Quotes Following Thursday's 72-64 Win Over Houston Baptist

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Overall thoughts on the game
"It was a huge night for us to come out and play after our bye on Saturday. The energy in the arena was great, first off. Having the students back along with another growing crowd, the energy was great. The team really fed off of that. This is a special place to play. When they're great energy in this place, it's a special, special place to play and I'm very proud of that. We played so hard and so unselfishly. We had four guys in double figures tonight. We didn't execute well in stretches. There were some very careless turnovers, which is frustrating. There was some easy stuff that we worked on that we just didn't execute in the second half, but when it counted we guarded at a high level and then we moved the ball and got it to where we needed to."
 
On the play of Houston Baptist in the second half
"That's a good team. They've got an incredible group of forwards. [Center Josh] Ibarra is a special guy. Both of their forwards can really shoot it. They've got a lot of talent and their guard play is solid. And they're as good of a coached team as there is in our league. My relationship with their coach goes back 16 or 17 years and have a ton of respect for them. It's a team that we were lucky to get a win from."
 
On trying to stop HBU center Josh Ibarra and the team's long layover since it's last game
"Ibarra has improved so much from a year ago. It was a war all night for our guys to try and keep him from catching it, but they did a great job on him. We played very, very hard. It was a long week. It seemed like forever since we played. I know the guys got tired of me grinding them, but we had some things that we had to get installed in our package still to try and help us down the road and in this last run. I think we did that. There were some things we had to do better, and I think we fixed that as well."
 
On individuals who stepped up in this game
"[Michael] Zeno was special tonight. His stats won't show it but his energy was there. He attacked the rim, which is something our staff worked hard on with him. He had great power moves. He really did a good job on some of those things. Defensively, he's really getting a knack for understanding angles and being able to guard anybody on the floor with his size and his length. He was really the spark for us to hold on and get us over the top. [A.J.] Cheeseman came in and gave us a good run again. [Jorge] Rosa made a big 3 in the corner, which really was a big momentum changer for us. We had a lot of guys step up along with the guys who scored in double figures."

On Saturday's game at Central Arkansas
"We're going to leave early tomorrow and it's a long ride out to Conway. It's as hard of a place to play in our league. It's a place we haven't had a ton of success. Coach Pennell has really done a great job of turning that thing around. They're as good of an offensive transition team as any in this league and they have one of the best guards in the league in Jordan Howard. He can really score and we're going to have our work cut out for us for all 40 minutes. I know our guys understand that challenge. It's a very short turnaround to try and get up there and try and get a tough win."
 
On being 5-1 in Southland Conference play
"It feels good. I'm very proud, again, of the progress that they're making. I continue to marvel at their unselfishness with each other and how hard they play for each other. They just play within the system and the program. That's been big. I'm so happy for our campus. I'm happy for our alumni, our administration and our athletic department. This is a group effort. This isn't just men's basketball. We're in this position because we've got a very supportive group of athletic department administrators along with our other student-athletes, the students on campus, our faculty, staff and our incredible alumni – not only in the metro area but worldwide. This is a group effort across the board for everybody."