SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 12, 2026

Porter Moser

Nijel Pack

Derrion Reid

Bridgestone Arena

Oklahoma Sooners

Postgame Press Conference

Oklahoma 83, Texas A&M 63

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Oklahoma. We'll start with opening comments from Coach.

PORTER MOSER: Happy for our guys. We played really hard. We knew the pace of the play was going to be fast on a quick turnaround.

I'll open it up to questions.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Nijel, are you okay? How are you feeling?

NIJEL PACK: Yeah, I'm fine. A little banged up, but feel pretty good and ready to go.

Q. What were y'all doing offensively to create the open shots?

NIJEL PACK: Yeah, we were just playing in our strengths. We knew they were going to press a lot. We were taking it to our advantage. We were able to break the press, play freely. They were able to find me a couple times and I was able to shoot.

Q. Nijel, early in the first half it seemed like there was a lot of times that y'all had some uncontested layups, caused some confusion. What were you doing to get some easy looks?

NIJEL PACK: Yeah, with them pressing so much and trapping early in the press, it gave us an advantage on the other side. Once we were able to break, we were playing really fast, we were putting them at a disadvantage. We were just finding the open guy, whether it was a three, and sometimes they stepped up and it ended up being a dunk at the rim.

So we kind of kept them off balance with that and tried to make them switch up what they were doing.

Q. Derrion, can you talk about the rebounding performance. What was working for y'all?

DERRION REID: Really just I used my rebounds to get me going on both sides of the ball honestly. I knew it would help my team. Coach is always on me about it so I just wanted to implement it into the game.

Q. I know y'all had two losses earlier in the season. Able to win one when it mattered most. Extra anything to get that win in the third game?

DERRION REID: Really just knowing what we have to do every time we step on the floor. Always going back to the drawing board to see what we can be better at.

NIJEL PACK: Yeah, it's really hard to beat a team three times. For us, our season lies in our hands. We wanted to leave our best foot forward, give our best effort.

Yesterday we started off a little slow. We wanted to do the opposite today. We wanted to make sure we came out firing on all cylinders for us. And that's what we did, and it was great from start to finish for us.

THE MODERATOR: Guys, you're dismissed. Thank you. We'll continue with questions for Coach Moser.

Q. Playing two games in two days, tomorrow you play an Arkansas team that had five days of rest, do you prefer having that rest or having your sea legs under you?

PORTER MOSER: We're excited to play. We knew Texas A&M's pace. Our guys are going to go through recovery. They're chasing. Your mindset is these guys aren't thinking about being tired. We know we got to recover tonight. We know we got to recover tomorrow. We know they've had two days, but we're not going to dwell on that. We're going to dwell on what we got to do to compete against Arkansas.

For these guys, we knew Texas A&M was going to press the whole game. We had seven turnovers, 16 assists. We held them to 15 two pointers. They had eight threes. In both games they had 10. We did a lot of things we needed to do to win. That's all we talked about today. We didn't talk about fresh legs.

Same process tomorrow. Ton of respect for Arkansas. Ton of respect for Cal, he's one of the best, and their team. We'll get ready to prepare, just like we did last night for Texas A&M. We'll have our prep all day tomorrow to get ready to play Arkansas.

Q. It's hard to beat a team three times. What was maybe different about this game?

PORTER MOSER: Well, we're defending at such a high level right now. That's a big part of it, of guarding the two. The second thing is the first time we played them, we had 17 turnovers. That style of play, they do such a good job at it.

The last game, second half, our offense, we weren't moving like we were tonight. We're just sharing it and moving it right now. I've said this four weeks ago, we got to play better basketball. We're playing really good basketball on both ends. We're defending.

You talk a lot about people, you can hear the noise right now, there's a lot of teams trying to limp into the tournament. For years I've been in this profession. Constantly say who is playing the best right now. This team has won eight out of 10 in the SEC, six in a row, all right? But we're not done yet. They were just in the locker room. We know we got a big task ahead of us against a great Arkansas team. We're looking forward to it.

Q. At one time you were an assistant at Texas A&M. Anything special, any of those memories?

PORTER MOSER: I mean, I'm excited for the guys, the magnitude of that win. Yeah, I met my wife there, got my coaching start there. Got a lot of fond memories of College Station and the people there.

Literally all I'm thinking about is that was a Quad 1 win, a decisive Quad 1 win in the tournament. Now we get to advance in the SEC tournament.

Q. Y'all had 18 second-chance points. They had one. Can you speak to that disparity?

PORTER MOSER: That was a huge part of the win. We knew we had to hit the glass. To have that many offensive rebounds, it got us going. Actually in that run when Texas A&M came out in the second half ready to go, we got back into it with some offensive rebound put-backs. I thought Mo and Derrion specifically. I thought Kirill Elatontsev gave us a really nice lift. Had a nice put-back, I think he had two, had some really good defense.

Definitely the offensive glass was a big factor tonight.

Q. Can you step back, you've been a head coach a long time, walk through the macro to get to this point where your goal all along is close.

PORTER MOSER: I think when you're going through it, when you go through struggle -- I was just asked that about when did I know they were good. It's how they responded through struggle. We had some heartbreaks, some heartbreaks. But every day there's a proverb I always have, in my book, it's fall seven, rise eight. Every day they kept on coming back and preparing, preparing. We had some heartbreaks, the Arkansas game, the Alabama game, the Missouri game. They just kept on coming back.

To watch them just keep believing, we kept on saying you got to keep believing when other people don't see a path. We said over and over there's a path. We lost nine in a row, we said there's a path. We added the word 'urgent' in front of 'path'. There's got to be some urgency in that path.

When you're in the SEC, every game is a Quad 1 or 2, you have a path. These guys believed it. We also said we had to play better defense. You can't win at this level in this league without playing better defense.

We have Dayton Forsythe back. Look at the numbers before Dayton was back and after. They're night and day. It's given Nijel and X a chance to rest. Imagine if we didn't have another point guard to rotate through. We're a different team getting healthy.

I just think, coaching a long time, leadership is a transfer of belief. Just constantly believing, coming to practice every day, my coaches, everybody believing.

But I don't want to sound like we don't have another game to play. We got Arkansas to play. We had that path. We're still believing. We'll get ready to play Arkansas tomorrow.

Q. Darius Acuff was named the SEC Player of the Year. What kind of challenges could he present for your defense tomorrow?

PORTER MOSER: Amazing. We saw it firsthand. I mean, he really took over down the stretch against us. I know he's been compared to a lot of NBA guys, as he should.

He just has that Derrick Rose, Allen Iverson speed with power. He makes the right pass. For a young guy he doesn't get sped up too much. He can score at all three levels. He can hit you, get some separation on a pullup. He's got dope range. He's phenomenal.

I love that he plays the right way, too. He plays within everything. He gets his other guys better. Phenomenal player.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.