Postgame Quotes
2/4/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 4, 2009
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Northwestern Head Coach Bill Carmody
Opening statement
"The game was what we expected. It's a high-scoring team with some very good offensive players. I think we were fortunate that they were missing some of their three-point shots. I was disappointed by our play in the first half. We had eight turnovers in the first half and had empty possessions. That really bothers me. I thought we were trying to be too cute a little bit. Some of them were trying to thread the needle instead of moving. Scoring passes happened a little too quickly. Craig [Moore] kept us in the game with his shooting in the first half and Kevin [Coble] around the basket. And the second half, [John] Shurna, we told him at halftime that he took just a few shots that first half. But a couple jumpers he took, he was hesitating. We just told him, 'If you're open, shoot the ball.' So he banged some shots there at the start of the second half that really got us going and we got that good lead. They're a tough team. My athletics director, Jim Phillips, told me that only three guys on their team scored, but they scored big. The team never quit and I think Benjy [Taylor]'s doing a really great job over there."
On both teams' play in the first half...
"That team could beat you. We had veteran guys out there. We should know that. You try to play as well as you can all the time. That's all there is to it. I didn't think we played as well as we could play and they had something to do with that. But I was just disappointed in that first half of play. They pressed us, but we didn't turn it over. We turned it over against their 2-3 zone. We hadn't seen too many zones but that's what we expected. I thought there were gaps there that if we would have probed a little bit longer, we would have found. We were trying to throw the scoring pass a little too soon in the possession."
On facing Iowa on Saturday...
"Last year, we had a nice lead out there and then [Cyrus] Tate really killed us inside. We're a little bigger inside this year. I know he's been out for a month so I'm sure he's coming back Saturday. [They're a] good shooting [team] and they play four guards. They work the ball around. They're like Michigan in some ways. You have to beat them. You really have to take it to them and beat them because they hang around. We have two days to prepare for them. They'll be looking at this tape to see what they can learn from it."
