HD Video: Indiana players react to win over Michigan

  • 02/03/2013 12:38 am in

Cody Zeller, Victor Oladipo and Christian Watford met with the media following Indiana’s 81-73 win over Michigan on Saturday at Assembly Hall.

Watch and listen to their postgame comments in the embedded media player below:

Quotes after the jump.

Victor Oladipo

On answering each of Michigan’s runs:

“They’re a terrific team. They’re really good. They’ve got a lot of good players. They’re well coached and they execute to perfection basically. I think our players did a good job of battling through their runs and executing down the stretch and that’s the reason why we won.”

On whether they made Trey Burke inefficient rather than shut him down:

“Yeah, I mean he takes a lot of shots. He had about 24 or 25 shots today. He’s efficient. That’s what he needs to do for his team to win. A guy like that, you’ve got to slow him down. They have a lot of players around him that are just as just as good with the ball and who can score at a high level. I think all of our players did a phenomenal job of containing him and containing all their players.”

On whether this is one of their best performances of the year:

“This is one of our best, we played solid. We came together when things were getting tight. We did a terrific job of stepping up and making free throws at the end. The big fella (Cody Zeller) doing his thing and Christian [Watford] with the double-double today. Without everybody we couldn’t win. We knew we needed everybody to step up and play today and I think everybody did a good job at that.”

Christian Watford

On his double-double and overall performance:

“I thought I played pretty solid. I got on the glass early. I think I went in the half with five. Anytime you go in the half like that you feel like you can get more rebounds. My teammates did a great job of finding me. Got lost in transition a couple times, got to the foul line, and made my free throws.”

On what he wanted to take away from Glenn Robinson III:

“I just wanted to take away his tendencies. I knew that he likes to get a lot of offensive rebounds, like the back cut and stuff like that. I just tried to limit his touches in that area and keep him off that glass and I feel like I did a good job at that.”

Cody Zeller

On the hot start to the game:

“We were getting a lot of movement through penetration and everyone was moving around. That’s when we’re at our best. To start off the game we always feed off the crowd. We have to give a lot of credit to how good the crowd was tonight. It definitely gets us going. It’s unlike anything else.”

On his long rebound near the end of the game:

“I was just trying to keep it alive and make a play down the stretch. I always pride myself on the hustle plays, all the little things that anyone can do. So it was a big play I guess.”

On whether the pace of the Michigan State game helped them with the back and forth pace tonight:

“I think every game in the Big Ten has kind of prepared us for this just because every team is good. They’re going to make runs. It’s going to be a good game right down to the end. We just had to take care of their runs and make a run of our own. I thought we did a pretty nice job of that tonight.”

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