Indiana University Athletics
Talking About North Florida
12/6/2013 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 6, 2013
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Indiana head coach Tom Crean met with the media on Friday to talk about tomorrow's game against North Florida. The game starts at 7:30 p.m. and will be televised on BTN.
Opening Statement
"I think everyone on our team is excited to play. I know the weather has hit at a tough time, but we are looking forward to a great crowd tomorrow night with a lot of energy. It is a rare Saturday night game for us this season and we are excited to play. I think we have had a couple of days to put ourselves in a position where we are going to completely focus on getting better and completely focus on improvement."
"I think our guys from the other night, they knew they did not play the way they are capable of in the second half. They have not needed a lot of reminders on that. They have come out with great energy and focus and resolve. We have had a couple of really good days to prepare for this game. Now it is a quick slot of games with Saturday, Tuesday and Saturday. No matter what it is with this team, we have to stay completely locked in to what our improvement is like, because they are very young, inexperienced and don't know what it is like to win on the road, even though that was our first real road game."
"The bottom line is we are trying to stay focused on the things that we can control and they can control how much better they are getting everyday with the way that we practice. That has been very good for us."
On not needing to be told they didn't play well in second half against Syracuse:
"I think you can just read it in people. They are ready to go. There is not a great deal of experience here, but there is a lot of hunger. I think when you have a group of guys that are hungry, they want to get right back at it. The other night was a lot of different things for us, but at the end of the day, it was the first true road game, and in the second half we played like that.
"Now it is a matter of moving forward from it and being that much better after going though it the next time we are faced with that situation. With a young team you have to constantly stay in the moment. If you stay too far behind or get too far ahead, you are going to screw them up, and the bottom line is we have to stay locked into what we have always wanted the mantra of this program to be, which is to max out the day, to get better everyday."
On benefits of playing in a hostile environment at Syracuse
"I think it will absolutely help them down the road. We are moving to the next game now. Hopefully that will come back to help them when you play in an environment like that, when we get into those environments again, which we will here shortly in the Big Ten."
On the game against North Florida:
"North Florida is very creative offensively. They run great stuff. Matthew Driscoll is a great coach. They pose different challenges. They run a lot of pick-and-rolls. They run a lot of screening actions. The biggest thing to me is guarding the dribble, on the defensive end, because they isolate very well. They will run some actions and then get it swung to the wing and the corner and then try to drive it. They have good balance with their scoring. They are a good offensive rebounding team. I would say that we are going to have to do a really good job of defensive rebounding. There are some personnel keys that we have to be completely locked into. That is really hard for young guys that have not done that over a period of time. It is about if we are trying to take this away from this person or that person, these couple of things. Older teams are better with that and we are still trying to learn that."
"Offensively we don't want to slow down at all. If anything we want to play faster and we did not play fast the other night, especially in the second half. We have to take better care of the ball. The decision making has to be better."
