Postgame Quotes
2/19/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 19, 2009
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Northwestern Head Coach Bill Carmody
Opening statement...
"It was just a great game. I'm really happy for our guys. They've been suffering for a week after losing to Illinois and Michigan. We've had a number of games like this game tonight. When we were down 40-28, it was going against us. We've had 12-point leads in the second half this year and lost them. This is just great for our guys to reverse it and come back. Practice the last two days has just been lousy. I told them before the game 'I don't know what to expect from you guys.' I usually don't talk that way. We went to that 1-3-1 zone in the second half and turned it around. It just comes down to that last play. Two plays before that, Michael Thompson drove it in there on the same play. He threw it back and [Jon] Diebler picked it off and went for the lay-up that tied the game. So when we had it with eight seconds, we were thinking about calling a timeout, but their guys are so fast and we had trouble all night with inbounds plays so we just said, 'Let's do the same thing.' When he got to the point, the guy didn't want to leave John [Shurna], but Mike [Thompson] just put a little extra something and made the guy come and Shurna knocked it down. It was just a real nice team effort for us. That's a good team out there so it's a very good win for us."
On the play of John Shurna...
"Shurna was sick all night last night and all day today. He didn't shoot during shootaround or anything. I didn't think he was going to play until game time. So for him to come through, he made some tough little lay-ups and a couple of drives. A lot of guys play when they're sick, but not a lot of guys play well when they're sick so that was great."
On Craig Moore's play and preparation for the game...
"He just had a really nice game. He's been struggling. He came to shootaround today and he was like a tornado or a typhoon. You know, we do shootaround drills and he was wearing himself out. He was cutting so hard and he really got exhausted, almost. I wasn't certain it was the best thing but I knew he was going through a slump. He's a very single-minded guy and that's what he thought was good for him."
On the team's attitude and resiliency...
"It's a testament to them. I feel really good about them. They feel good about themselves. Even though the last couple of practices were sort of lackluster...the guys that jump around aren't always the guys that play hard. I guess the resiliency is there. That's a great thing to have because it's such a long season. We're going to enjoy this for a day and go up there to Minnesota. We lost two close games and this was a homestand. Now we're going away for a lot of games so it's going to get rougher. They will understand that."
