Northwestern University Athletics
Postgame Quotes
11/22/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 22, 2009
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Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody
Opening statement...
"I think it was 31-17 and I tried to throw a few guys in there in the first half. We just turned the ball over. We had 12 turnovers in the first half. They forced them, so give credit to them. I think they're forcing 26 turnovers a game, so they're coming after everybody they play. We only had two in the second half, which was fortunate because we needed every possession and every shot that we could get. I thought Mike [Thompson] was very good the whole game. He had some miscues in the first half, a couple of turnovers, but he's taking action and being aggressive, which is nice. I thought in the second half, Drew Crawford was very, very good. He missed a foul shot, he back-tapped it out and hit a three, got a rebound, threw it out and hit another three. Just seemed like he was getting strong offensive rebounds. He wasn't putting them up because they were all over him, but he found the right guy and I think that was vital. And then Alex Marcotullio banged that big shot, which was nice. Mike missed one and I think that's when Drew got a rebound and threw it out, or someone did. I knew that one was going in, but Alex's was a pretty long shot there. He sort of caught it in stride and he was calling for the ball, he wanted the ball so it was good to see two freshmen producing. I thought that team, we let them hang around in the last seven minutes or six minutes in the first half and they've got guys that can play. When you do that with anybody, they feel better about themselves and we weren't able to end the half up 14 or 16, which is what I thought we should have."
On Michael Thompson scoring more points this season...
"Even before Jeff [Ryan] and Kevin [Coble] got injured, we told him. I think he averaged eight or nine shots a game last year. And we said, 'You've got to take 12 or 13 shots a game, even with Kevin in there.' So he knew coming into this year that he was going to be expected to score a little bit more. He's a very, very good shooter."
On the swing in momentum at the end of the game...
"It wasn't any words of wisdom necessarily, but we started picking up. Right after we started picking up full court and I thought that bothered them a little bit. We got a turnover and then it just seemed like they were a little rattled, a little back on their heels. It seemed to take a little of their drive away so we kept it up for the last nine minutes. And I think it was down eight with 5:30 to go or something like that and just before that we started pressing."
