Opening Statement
“We played really good defense. As well as we played defensively, we’re just the opposite on the offense, but Indiana had a lot to do with that. [Errek] Suhr took his team when they were drowning and picked them all up. What a courageous performance by that kid. That’s the beauty of the college game. Our offense put so much pressure on our defense that that to me, as a coach, we have to play great defense or we don’t win this game because on offense we just struggled. We couldn’t catch the ball and we couldn’t dribble. Then to go down to the other end and play beautiful basketball; it seems crazy. This was our kids’ first huge game. They were so ready to play, [which was] evident by how we played in the first half. The last minute of the first half and that last play had residual effect on the game and that’s what it does on a younger group sometimes. I’m proud of our guys. To play with a low efficiency on offense and still win is kind of incredible.”
On the offense
“Today not much looked good on offense. Yesterday at practice, a number of things looked good. We just need to get familiarity. If you have a choice of where you want to be, when you can have one or the other, this is the choice you’d like to have because you can still win with defense and rebounding. The offense will come.”
On Greg Paulus
“Medically, his foot is 100 percent but his conditioning is not along with his repetitions in playing the game. When you’re off for five weeks, it takes time. He just needs reps. I thought he played well in the second half. He’ll be there.”
On Indiana
“They are well-coached and they play really good defense. They were good last year and they’re good this year. We have two really good wins and two really tough games [against Indiana] and we feel really good about winning tonight. It wasn’t that easy. The ball was not easy to put in the basket tonight.”