Northwestern vs Purdue -- Postgame Quotes
2/16/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 16, 2008
Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody
Opening statement...
"It's sort of a pattern now. It seems like we're playing pretty decently for a half or maybe 25 minutes or a little more and then we seem to hit one of these droughts where we have a hard time putting the ball in the basket. [Purdue] forces 18 turnovers a game and before the game, I said to our guys 'If we get below 12, I think we have a pretty good shot. That means we're running our offense, getting pretty good looks and getting some lay-ups because they play you very hard.' I see that we only had six turnovers. Maybe it was the shots that we got in the second half, because they defended a lot better for a stretch there, and we weren't getting the same looks that we had gotten earlier. Then the whole night, we weren't able to contain [E'Twaun] Moore. He was getting to the hole, driving in the gaps, knocking down shots and he sort of carried them. Purdue is a very well balanced team. On different nights, different guys come through for them. That's what makes them a good team, but they all guard pretty well."
On Northwestern's defense of E'Twaun Moore...
"I don't think we were losing him. They were screening us on the baseline and we just weren't getting out to him. We tried to make a point of tilting it towards him in the second half but he's patient and he's a good player. He's a smart player. The ball was whipping around the perimeter a little too much. When we ran our 1-3-1, the ball had to go over the top of peoples' heads and that many chest passes makes it almost impossible to get out on."
On the offensive production of Kevin Coble and Jeremy Nash...
"I still don't think he's in the groove. He's had some pretty good looks that he's missing and that shot doesn't seem as fluid to me as I think it should be and as I've seen it before. Again, he's being played hard and Craig [Moore]'s being played hard. And Jeremy [Nash] comes in and he's playing better and better but if you're going to play 30 minutes, we've got to figure out some way for him to score. He had a breakaway, but that was about it. So at the end of the day, it comes down to putting the ball in the basket and I don't know if we have enough of those guys."
On substitutions early in the game and playing in tight games...
"I just thought we'd throw some guys in there, in and out, to keep them fresher. I thought Ivan [Peljusic] did ok. He was aggressive offensively and he went to the basket. But you start the second half, you run a little set play. He gets a lay-up and he misses it. We missed three or four lay-ups in the first half and to their credit, they probably blocked four or five times to the rim. We were really getting some pretty good looks. Again, if you're in a pretty close game with a good team, you have to make your foul shots. That keeps you in there. You've got to make them and we didn't do that. The better team stayed the course and won the game."
Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter
Opening Statement...
" I thought [Northwestern] played very well. They had a stretch there where [Craig] Moore got away from us once for a three, then they stuck another three. We were in a tough position. At that time, I was more worried about passing and catching. We were having a difficult time just passing and catching and making a simple play. You have to give [Coach Carmody] credit, he stayed with that 1-3-1 defense almost the whole time. That gave us some problems, there's no doubt about that. The thing I worry about is playing them on the road for the first time with so many inexperienced players against his system. It is different. Having discipline on defense, and then also having discipline on offense and being able to find the creases in the 1-3-1, that was my concern."
On his team's turnovers...
"We had way too many turnovers, maybe the most turnovers we've had in Big Ten play. We weren't able to force them into turnovers. It's a dilemma you're in as a coach, especially as a coach that uses pressure defense. You can go and pressure, and then all of a sudden you're going to open up an avenue for a lot of back cuts and lay-ups. We wanted to eliminate those opportunities. We didn't totally eliminate them, but I thought we did a better job as the game went along of stopping those lay-ups. We were just scared from all of their cuts, so we backed up on the pressure. But then we didn't force the turnovers and obviously we had too many turnovers ourselves."
On the advantages of using a small line-up late in the game...
"Well when you go small you're able to switch on ball screens, you're able to switch on dribble handoffs, and you're able to have a more agile player opening up on the cuts. So now we're also putting better pressure on the basketball. It makes it easier for us to defend that way against what they do. It was very important that we go to that line-up at that time. I tried for a long time to have a big player in there, but it just didn't help us. It's tough. It's tough for JaJuan [Johnson] and its tough for Nemanja [Calasan] to defend all of the things that they do."
