HD Video: Tom Crean reacts to win over Mount St. Mary’s
Tom Crean met with the media following Indiana’s 93-54 win over Mount St. Mary’s on Wednesday night at Assembly Hall. Watch and listen to the press conference in the embedded media player below:
Quotes after the jump.
Opening Statement:
“I was really proud of our team in the way that they responded. When you come off a tough loss it creates a different level of urgency in your team and we dealt with a multitude of situations- with both staff and players. We had coaches in sick bay most of the day and I think this is the first game Tim Garl has ever missed. But your team just has to keep moving forward no matter what and I thought our guys did an excellent job. We moved the ball extremely well, I thought we kept the pace moving, and I thought we got good contributions from guys that we in earlier than they normally would be. It was great to have Derek (Elston) back, it was great to have Hanner (Mosquera-Perea) get some solid minutes, I thought our top six or seven guys really, really competed at a high level, and I’m proud of the way we played. We played a team that stayed true to form: shooting a lot of threes. They lead the country in percentage of points coming from the three and they’ve got some guys that can really play on the perimeter. It was a good win for us.”
On the high number of assists:
“That was excellent; we really had great ball movement. They key for us in having great ball reversal is to get it inside early, or get it inside as we reverse it, and I thought the ball moved at an extremely high rate tonight. Twenty-seven assists is outstanding, and that’s amazing to have a team shoot the fourth highest field goal percentage in school history. Seventy-five percent from the three point line can’t be far behind that. But again, our ball movement triggered most of that. They were close to 60 deflections and created a lot of turnovers.”
On when he knew Derek Elston was ready to play again:
“We felt good about it today. Yesterday afternoon when we brought him back his energy was really good and he looked good, but the decision was made today. It probably would have been a bit of a reach to play him minutes on Saturday, but he has recovered at a good pace. It was great to have him out there.”
On Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell’s continued development:
“He’s doing a great job. He has really adhered to moving the ball and not settling for shots while still feeling comfortable shooting the ball. I wish he had hit that last three to put him in double figures. His head is up and he’s got great sense. He’s really been working hard defensively and at playing long stretches of minutes. He just does a fantastic job of finding people. He has been incredibly consistent in his 11 college games and his demeanor, his attitude, his improvement level, his becoming a two-way player have all been great while never getting away from being able to find the open player.”
On Maurice Creek’s injury:
“We are sad that he is injured. You never want to see anybody hurt, but you especially don’t want to see him go through hard times because he has continued to get better. We don’t have a time frame on it, but we are hoping it’s not very long.”
On Christian Watford being assertive early:
“Christian creates a lot of energy for everybody when he’s making threes. It creates energy for himself, but it creates energy for his teammates too. I thought he played outstanding. He was right around double-figures in deflections but his rotations, his guarding the ball, his switching, his pick-and-roll defense, all those things were outstanding. He was really good tonight, and he’s been good the last couple days, so it was good to see him have a productive night- he deserves it.”
On the team’s rebounding:
“I think we needed to fix some technique things and I think we did a better job tonight. It’s really about making the first contact. We were a lot better in a lot of areas rebounding wise, but we were especially better in our free-throw rebounding. There are a lot of things that you can constantly improve on but there are certain things that you really pinpoint, and I think keeping our feet moving on our block-outs was really important.”
Filed to: Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers, Tom Crean