Postgame Quotes: Indiana at Rutgers
1/30/2019 10:10:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Indiana Head Coach Archie Miller
Opening statement: "Heck of a game played by Rutgers. I thought they did what they do well, really rebounded the ball. Put a lot of fouls on us because of our lack of ability to rebound. That hurt us in the first half, it changed the game. Second half, give them credit. They made everything around the basket hard. We had some decent looks, point-blank ones that they blocked or challenged. And they were able to take advantage of some run outs and some things where our offense broke down early. Our guys kind of hung tough, fought it out there a little bit, but it just wasn't good enough tonight with the inability to rebound, and in reality, the inability to continue to score. We had a nice stretch there in the first half with about six to go, fouls crept in and they go, I think, 9-0 in the last 1:26 of the half. That was a big momentum swing for us coming out of halftime. Got to keep getting better. Got to keep finding a way. We're at the halfway point. We'll play our seventh out of 11 road games on Saturday. In some ways, hopefully that will come back as the season continues to progress in a good way for us. We've been on a heck of a stretch and just haven't been good enough to win these games. That's part of playing the Big Ten."
On room for error: "We don't have a lot of room for error. We have six scholarship players out in practice right now. You have two juniors who have played two years in the Big Ten who aren't part of what we're doing the whole month, pretty much all January. And you have some young guys out there who are having to play extended minutes, which will benefit them in time. But you can't make any excuses. Like I told them before the game, this same team found a way to grind it out in November and December when it wasn't pretty. At some level, I think it's confidence, a little bit. I think it's fatigue a little bit. Hopefully we can find a way to be ourselves and stay with it right here. Our lack of shooting are our inability to continue to score are something that has been problematic. You can't be perfect on every possession defensively. And we had some bad possessions offensively early in that second half that gave them turnovers, gave them baskets. We are who we are. Hopefully each day we get a guy back or each game we get two guys back. I'm not real sure. But what we have is what we have. Those guys have to understand, they got to bring it. It is up to our staff, like I told them, we all have to be better right now."