Coach Crean’s Post Game Comments

Here is the transcript from Coach Crean’s post game press conference after the victory against Evansville. Complements of iuhoosiers.com:

Opening Statement:

“All in all for us, this is a great win because they are a very good team. Extremely well-coached, which we knew they would be and they showed on film which Marty has done there for a very long time. We knew we were going to have to be very good defensively to compete in this game. Our defense got better as the game went on and again, we shot a good percentage in the first half but it wasn’t exactly Taylor-made for us because they were doing an excellent job in their game plan.

“In the second half we had to make a couple of adjustments and our players did and we made the game a little easier for ourselves on the offensive end, yet continued to turn it up on the defensive end. I think the fact that we had some very good runs inside this game especially from I think the 16 to the 8 minute mark and the 16 to the 5 minute mark said a lot about our defense. It said a lot about our rebounding and said a lot about the way we’re moving the ball. It was very important for us to keep establishing that we can play excellent defensive and we can rebound the ball and take care of the basketball even when things aren’t going great for us. In the second half like I said, we made it easier for ourselves with the next pass. They did an excellent job and had a great game plan. We had to make many adjustments to that but fortunately this team is maturing, they did it and they never got their heads down when it wasn’t easy. What they’re learning is that to win at this level against anybody is very hard to do. When you earn it like our guys did today it’s a great feeling and now we’ll get to turn right back around and do it again.”

On key adjustments at halftime:

“They were doing an excellent job of packing the lane and we wanted to get the ball into the paint. We wanted to get it there through ball reversals and they did an excellent job of clogging the lane. We didn’t do such a good job of kicking it out and there was a lot of contact in the lane. Sometimes we were rewarded for it, sometimes we weren’t. And that’s part of the game. The adjustments were a lot more about just spreading the help out a little bit and finding our shooters. They did an excellent job with Christian (Watford). There were times that he had two people, sometimes three on him, which opened it up for others. Our guys did a really good job of recognizing, playing through that recognition and then making the adjustments when we would at halftime or calling it from the bench.”

On playing through the foul trouble:

“That’s why it never seemed like we never got some real continuity in the first half and yet I look at our shooting percentage it was 50 percent. You just wouldn’t think that we got that. It’s a play on demand type of situation when you play sports. I thought Jeff Howard did a good job of that. It became pretty clear early on that we were going to have to go deep into our bench with the foul trouble we had, especially when Bobby got fouls so early. And Jeff came in and did a great job. We never really got any true continuity but at the same time we were continuing to play through it. We were not allowing them to get off on a great run even though we were down at half. I liked the maturity of our guys in that situation of playing with different people, playing different spots, and then in the second half it was a little more systematic for us.

On Tom Pritchard’s performance:

“He did an excellent job. We’ve seen that the last couple of days in practice as well. He had 12 deflections and a plus 12 on the day for the plus-minus. So that’s very good. He did some excellent things there. And he played through foul trouble as well. We showed excellent mobility, down in a stance, and did a very good job on the ball and rotated well off the ball which is where block shots are usually going to come from and he controlled the paint. He had 7 rebounds in the 2nd half and I believe Christian had 6 in the 2nd half. That was a big story inside of the game too. We can be a good defensive team when we have five players in the paint when the shot goes up. We’re not a great block out team yet but we’re getting better. If we have five people in the lane, then we have a chance to get defensive rebounds and get a break on them.