Indiana vs. Michigan State Postgame Quotes
1/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 4, 2014
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Indiana Head Coach Tom Crean
Before I talk about us, I think they have all the makings of what a National Championship team would look like. I don't think there's any question.
There's no way to prepare to play against Michigan State and say that you can leave this guy here, you can leave that guy there.
They're too good. And they showed that today. I thought Will Sheehey did a phenomenal job on fighting Adreian Payne for space for his touches, really being aggressive with him. Adreian played excellent, didn't force things. They just have too many guys right now, they have too many guys that understand each other at a really high level. They understand how to win and things that hurt us today, especially in the first half, and we've got to grow out of this, because it's getting me downright angry with it.
We've got to grow out of understanding how not to take momentum. So we get down 6, we get down 4, that's not a time when you're you're rarely ever going to be in the bonuses as early as you are against Michigan State, like we were today. It's hard. They don't foul very much. Every winning statistic, they're one of the most dominant teams in the country in those areas.
When you find something you've got which is important to get to the foul line, then it can't become jump shooting time.
And we struggle right now with understanding momentum. We struggle with understanding time and score. Some of it is immaturity. Some of it is youth. Some of it is just not understanding the ball needs to go through the paint.
Noah Vonleh is going to continue to get better. No doubt he's got to become a more demanding presence. He works too hard on his game. He's too good a person. He's got to be a demanding presence and become downright a little selfish.
And I hate using that term, but I have no better term than to use for him with that, because that's what he's got to be around the paint.
And we just we scrapped back in. We played a lot of different lineups to get back in the game. We played hard. Okay. They played smart. And both teams played hard. I thought they were great battles on the boards, especially with the fact it's a two rebound difference, but their maturity, their experience, their understanding of each other, that was a big, big difference in the game, the biggest difference in the game.
That's why they have a chance to win the National Championship and that's why we have a lot to learn.
How often is Noah open in the passing lanes when you watch him today and on film?
I think it's both, I think he's learning. He's going against physical people. There's no question about that. He's getting better out on the perimeter. We've gotta do a better job of creating a passing angle, sometimes when they're backed off us right now it's no CNN news flash that we're not a great 3 point shooting team.
So you're not getting all out pressure, even though they had some guys today that they decided they were going after, just like we have guys we want to go after, and a little bit of it is creating the space. Our screening in the first half was sub zero, without having the grades, without doing the grades myself, they weren't good enough on actions.
We're trying to make it simple to get it in. But we've got to be better. They're a physical, imposing team. There's no question this was an old style Big Ten game in the sense of the physicality in the post. Probably on both ends.
vSo no question about that. And we've just gotta learn to deal with that. Learn to deal with that. Keep creating those angles. But Noah has got to get more than one offensive board. Let's be honest about it. We've to do a better job making sure we're getting putbacks.
We've got to find easy baskets, whether they're postups, through the lanes, offensive rebounds or whether, frankly, they're free throws, being free throws. So those are things that are really, really important.
They attacked our dribble today like we attacked theirs. And they had more guys that could make shots when the ball went outside, and we didn't. And we've got to continue to grow and learn from those things.
Are you specifically talking about the stretch when you got down by just one?
Absolutely. I want us to attack the rim. So some of it is offense. Some of it is offense. Some of it is reversal. We talk ad nauseam about points through the paint, constantly, whether it's timeouts, whether it's halftime, postgame, and we've just got to play we've got great kids. We've just got to have a basketball IQ, a basketball maturity right now.
And that's where the understanding is not there yet; that, no, we've got to drive it to the rim, get it swung, get it inside, get it in the paint.
Great example, Jeremy Hollowell scores 2 breaks it down and goes to the rim, then trying to go inside on the second side, on the reversal play on one of our sets, we take a 3. That's not time or place for a guy shooting in the teens to be shooting a 3 when we're down 6.
Those are the things that we've got to learn from just being completely blunt about it. So we will. I mean, we continue to come back and we played a lot we played different, but we are going to have to play a great game to beat them. Our first half hurt us. The start of the second half, we scrapped back but we never could ever get over the hump inside of the end of the first half, beginning of the second half, without having the book in front of me, knowing the book.
Quick timeout early in the second half, was that just to make sure it wasn't a Syracuse situation?
I don't remember. Probably. Just change our lineups. So when you have young guys, I mean the reason they're so good they don't have to rely on anybody young. That's why this league is so good. The great ones just keep being experienced. They add new players, young players, but they've always got experience to deal with. We've got to grow through that.
Our sophomores have to pick it up. No question about that. And all the way around. And again Will was phenomenal, okay? And it was the one leader that we had inside of this game, but he can do more with his voice.
But when you're guarding Adreian Payne and giving up that size and weight, you're pretty much in a one man battle right there. You don't have a lot of other things you can focus on. That's how we have to play, how we have to go. We didn't feel like anything different we could be in foul trouble from the very beginning of this game.
Talk about Stan's defense today on Gary Harris.
Aggressive. I wish we would have got him on Harris quicker in the first half to be honest. Gary was an assassin today. Never hunted, always in spacing, always in movement. Very improved as a player. We've covered that a lot.
But you got to match guys like that, guy's desire to compete in the game. Stan did that. But his offense really came on just action, activity, aggressiveness, break, things like that.
How have you seen Stan grow up these past few games?
Stan? Going into the Illinois game, the previous seven games he had highest plus/minus and it wasn't close. So there's a good example. And what he's doing I asked him to do this a couple weeks ago I don't want it to be a technical but, again, I've got to look at that on film. It was a chippy game all the way across the board. So I'm not going to overreact to that.
But he's got a personality. He's got a toughness about him. And he's building his skill level. You're always working and building your skills but you're developing your mindset. And it comes your skills get better. That helps the confidence. But a lot of times just bringing out the personality and doing what you know and doing what's always worked for you.
A year and a half ago he was basically a 4 man in high school. That's why they won so much. He came from a great high school program and went off to Finley, won a lot played against a lot of exposure. And here he is.
We need him to be a blue collar, just go at it guy, because that's what he is. And he's doing more of that for us.
What do you need to see more from Jeremy Hollowell?
We need to see more out of everybody. I wouldn't distinguish. When you lose a game, there's not one class that doesn't need to get better. But we've got the spotlight on the sophomores right now, if we're going to break it down to class. They've got to improve.
Everybody's got places they can grow in, and shooting the ball, passing the ball, you know those types of things.
But we just need to play, we need to play and understand time and score. Not play just going up and down the court just understanding what the game is bringing. The more you play, the more you learn that. I get that. I hope you all get that. I hope the fans get that. The more you do it, the better the understanding you have. It's not like we can all of a sudden put three months of Big Ten basketball into these guys' bodies.
We can show them all the film we want. It doesn't work that way. But we've got to start to understand time and score and momentum because that's what so many of these games come down to throughout the game. And we're pretty good on the break, pretty good at offensive rebound and pretty good in the middle.
Michigan State is pretty good on the break, pretty good at offensive rebounding, they're really good in the middle. And that's really a microcosm of teams. They're really, really strong throughout each possession. They understand time and score. They've got a lot of guys that can make plays. We've got to continue to trust what works for us. And when you're in the bonus the way we are, we've got to understand that, that's what we've got to continue to just pound on expound upon in practice and in coaching and film work and all those things all the time.
We've got to understand that sometimes we're just going to have to make some changes in the game with the personnel that's on the floor to get that understood.
How much was Michigan State hitting their 3s based on them hitting them on the defense, leaving them open?
I haven't really looked at the stats. Let me see. Big mistakes, couple times, especially when we fouled. We're leaving this happens when teams don't understand it yet which we don't. You can never let the speed and the pressure of the game override what is really, really important, would like the scouting report. Travis Trice was shooting 74 percent from 3 in the away games.
We probably said that 37,000 times in the last three days. You don't leave him. You don't do that. You've got to understand we've got the dribble picked up, and we just didn't play with great awareness on some of that. And then a couple times we misplayed screens.
haven't looked at the film obviously, but we misplayed screens. But a little bit was just overhelp and not get back out and just we stopped we stopped understanding and we got the ball covered. Don't leave the shooters.
And the other day we were really good at that. That's part of the youth process, I guess, because the other day we held that team to 11 percent from 3.
We didn't help off shooters. They had outstanding shooters too we helped too much, got too much in the scramble.
And frankly we played some lineups we don't play very often, as you probably know. You throw caution to the wind and you're trying to get back into the game.
Indiana Players
What started to get away from you guys in the second half?
Will Sheehey: Taking shots, making them take contested shots. They had too many open looks off their break. Did a good job stopping the initial break but their secondary break we didn't stop enough shots.
What happened with the bandage?
Yogi Ferrell: Just falling on the floor, really, court burn. I'm all right, though.
Talk about the number of turnovers you gave up.
Yogi Ferrell: Still had more than what we wanted to get for turnovers. The thing about that, we didn't get enough points off their turnovers, I felt like. But we just had to kind of take care of the ball.
We made great runs, but we could never push over that hump.
What makes Michigan State a strong team?
Yogi Ferrell: The ability to get out and run, especially offensively and defensively, they do a great job of help side defense, I felt like. They especially packed the lane a lot. Those are the things they do well.
What was Michigan State doing to take Noah Vonleh out of the game?
Will Sheehey: They were fighting him for his catches, making every catch tough for him. He's got to find a way to get more touches, easier touches. He's got to work harder to get open. And we've got to work harder to get him open.
Was there anything that Michigan State did to stop your breaks?
Will Sheehey: We just had to wear them down, and we didn't get a point where we could speed them up enough so we could get on the break. They had some second chance points and when the ball's going through the rim it's hard to get your break going.
So we went to contest shots, make them shoot more contested shots and get out on the break.
Is there a certain amount of adjusting to the pace of the game in the Big Ten?
Yogi Ferrell: I'm not really sure. I can't remember their turnovers, but I think a lot of them are unenforced and that's just the flow of the game. We're okay with those kind of turnovers.
But turnovers where we're just giving them the ball and they're scoring and things like that, we're not okay with. So they're still learning. And we're just going to learn to teach them every day.
Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo
Opening Statement
"Knowing Tom Crean like I know him, I'm pretty sure both coachers were a little bit upset by the way we played in the first half. I don't think either team played very well. They turned it over; we turned it over, and neither one of us shot very well. I was disappointed in us, to be honest with you. They did a good job on (Adreian) Payne, but we didn't get him the ball enough. He has to get more shots and (Keith) Appling has to do a better job of staying out of foul trouble. Each time we have come to Indiana, Keith has been in foul trouble. Credit our guys in the second half because we really locked up defensively. Other than the last few minutes, I thought we executed much better. I thought (Gary) Harris was unbelievable. He's a special player, and I promise he's not even close to where he's going to be. His conditioning right now is nowhere near where it needs to be, but he was solid defensively and he did some good things on offense. There were times when he backed off because he was fatigued, but we also got a lot out of Matt Costello and Branden Dawson. I think our main thing now is getting our rotation down. With all the injuries we have had, we've just been a little bit out of sync. We used to have a pro rotation where guys automatically knew when they were going in and we are not there yet right now. We are probably a week or two away from having a set rotation. We are just glad to get two big road wins. Indiana played so well against Illinois, and I think they should have won that game. I don't think Indiana played as well today, and I don't think we played as well today. I'm not sure if our defense had something to do with it or not, but it was still a big, big road win for us."
On Michigan State's ability to go on big runs:
"Indiana is awfully young right now and our guys are veterans. I think our win against Texas was big in that it taught us how to win on the road and it taught us what we have to do against good rebounding teams. We came into Indiana and were up seven or eight on the boards, even though we did a poor job on the glass the last 10 minutes. That's something we are going to go back and work on tomorrow. We are getting better, but I think we have a ways to go. I think Indiana will get a lot better I really, really do. Their kids are going to get better, and I think this was maybe a game they just didn't play as well in."
On Gary Harris getting his explosion back:
"We showed him a tape that we had of him last year where he took a lot of shots from three, and I showed him before the game to point out that, `Gary, you're not playing this way now.' He's coming off kind of passive, and he gets that. He told me on the sideline today, `Coach you better bump up my conditioning.' The big thing is that we need to improve the play of the bigs. (Denzel) Valentine and (Travis) Trice have to be dynamite coming off the bench, and we didn't play that way today."
On this being only the 13th time that MSU has won at Indiana:
"I think that tells you a lot of things, that tells you that maybe we weren't good enough, and it tells you that Indiana has been such a dominant program throughout the years. They have had some legendary coaches at IU, and I think they have one right now. The students are on break, and this crowd was still really impressive. This place was packed, and I think that's why legendary programs make it very hard for other teams to win on their home court. That's why I'm sure not going to discredit how big this win was against a good team on the road in such a tough place to win."
