Postgame Quotes - Indiana vs. Michigan State
1/5/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Head Coach Tom Crean |
Opening statement...
Michigan State did a really good job of getting us back on our heels early in the game, and we allowed them to do it. I am disappointed that we never pushed back, figuratively, not literally. Our guys were excited to play, I don’t think that there is any question about that. We have practiced well, but being excited to play is a lot different than being ready to compete and fight with a team like Michigan State. The good news is we have been doing that, the bad news is that we picked a bad night to not do it. They deserve a ton of credit because they played really well, but everything we needed to do in this game; get back on transition, get back on defense, definitely block out, we didn’t do those things. Not with any sense of purpose. Offensively, I was highly disappointed too. We didn’t cut with any urgency, our cuts and screens were soft as maybe I’ve ever coached at Indiana, maybe anywhere. That’s it, we got back on our heels and just didn’t respond. I thought our leadership was left somewhere back in Bloomington and I guess that falls on me because we didn’t have any leadership in that game whatsoever. The second half, we played some guys that had some fight, tried to stay on the ground a little bit, but they played an outstanding game, and there is no question about that. I was concerned about how we were going to score in this game and how we were going to stop them. Because when you don’t attack them with screens and move the ball at a pace, we just didn’t do any of that so we have got to get better in a hurry. This league is obviously very unforgiving. They could care less what you did the last game. Whether you win or lose, you got to bring it quickly and we will start responding again in the morning.
On MSU’s success and IU’s struggles tonight...
Oh I am sure it was a combination of both. They did a really good job, they played well. He [Tom Izzo] told me as we were walking off of the court that it was their best game of the year. He is probably just being my good friend. They have a really good team. I sent him some texts as we were studying the film and I said ‘wow this defense is good.’ And they really are, they cover so much ground, they help, but we played into that and we didn’t attack. When we attacked off the dribble, and it was really just one guy, Yogi [Ferrell], and really disappointed in our level of compete and attack tonight on offense as well as defense. When we attacked, it made them help and it was a better game. We missed a lot of shots. I think we will watch the film and see that we missed a lot of shots we usually make. So we picked a bad night. I don’t know how many open ones we had, certainly it is not characteristic of us to shot that poor, but I am not concerned about that. I am more concerned about the level of cutting and screening, and attacking with the ball.
On how he felt his team matched up with Michigan State...
I don’t know how much you have seen us play, but our half-court offense, that becomes fun to talk about when you’re running. We have been pretty good at the half-court, we did a really good job the other night against Nebraska in the half-court, we did an excellent job against Butler in the half-court. I don’t think it’s that. I think tonight, we didn’t look like we have ever played half-court offense. I am just bewildered at the lack of purpose that we played with, with the cutting and the screening compared to the way we have been playing and compared to the way we have practiced. I am not going to put that on youth either because we just didn’t do it. You know [Hanner] Mosquera-Perea was certainly not ready to play tonight and now he will be in for a dogfight at that position because Emmitt Holt was. He didn’t play well but he was a little more ready to play. Troy [Williams] gave us really very little fight tonight, and those guys have to go be good in the half-court. Troy is one of our better guys in the half-court at moving without the ball, and that didn’t happen tonight. We just didn’t respond, we didn’t respond to the physicality. When you don’t do that with screens, we are out there slipping screens, we have a call for slipping-screens. This was one game we didn’t want to be slipping screens hardly at all. When you do that inside your half-court offense, your half-court offense is going to be very good, but we will improve. Sometimes you are just not as good as you think you are, and coaches really look and see how good they really think they are to win a game, but sometimes you have to have the same attitude when you lose a game. I think they had a lot to do with it, but we contributed to it.
On the disconnect between good practices and the game...
We got back on our heels and got disappointed real quick. You know, our whole message, and when you’re playing really good teams, you can’t get discouraged, you got to keep coming. You know, you can get in on pick but you are going to hit on from Michigan State, you have got to keep coming, you got to keep challenging the shot, you got to keep fighting over the screen. Well tonight we never made them do that on the defensive end. They didn’t have to fight over any screens because we didn’t set them. So we have just got to be much more efficient with our purpose and how we play. But we have been, we can’t score the points and make the improvements. Going into tonight’s game we have been outrebounding teams by nine, against some really good teams, and tonight we weren’t even close. We really improved in those areas but we will just get back at it, and keep improving. We are not going to change how we practice, and certainly not change what we have been doing to get better. We just have to get our urgency revisited, quickly.
