Video, Quotes: IU players react to win over North Florida

  • 12/07/2013 10:25 pm in

Evan Gordon (15 points, four rebounds), Austin Etherington (six points) and Stanford Robinson (six points, eight rebounds) met with the media following Indiana’s 89-68 win over North Florida on Saturday.

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

A full transcript is available after the jump.

You had a season-high 15 points tonight, what went well for you tonight?

Evan Gordon: Our team shared the ball. I was open; it’s not going to be like tonight every night, but tonight’s mine and I had to make sure I knocked down the shots.

Can you tell us how you needed some perimeter shots, how you could leave it to 3s? How important is it for the team now?

Austin Etherington: We know going forward that we have to improve our 3-point shooting. Us three other guys on the perimeter, all the extra work, coming in early, staying after practice and working on our shot, and I think today I felt we shot the ball pretty well from 3 compared to what we have. The work is paying off and we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing.

How has bench performance had an impact?

Stanford Robinson: Coach preaches, a lot of teams don’t have a bench they can go to. So you see a lot of teams playing seven players, six players a game. And it’s important for our bench to not drop off, what our starters are doing. So we come in with a strong bench, then that’s like having five more starters back on the floor.

How important was the ball movement?

Stanford Robinson: We just focused on what we did right so we can come back into today’s game and try to expand on that.

Basically just moving the ball, getting the defense moving. We got good shots and that was our big focus point today.

Talk about Hanner Mosquera-Perea and Luke Fischer’s contributions tonight.

Austin Etherington: Like with the extra work I was talking about, those guys are two of the guys who come in with us and do the extra work.

And I feel like those guys coming in and having a good game will help us going forward, getting their confidence, letting them know that they can come in and do things just like everyone else can. So I think that’s very important for those two.

Talk about the freshmen getting into the flow of the game.

Evan Gordon: Each practice, they’re getting better. Just all the freshmen across the board, with the games under their belt and practices under their belt, they can develop good habits and come around and have good games.

How much more comfortable are you now?

Evan Gordon: I think I’ve been comfortable since the start of the season. Just happened to be a good night, and I knocked down some shots and I got out in the open court and scored a little bit.

Are you most comfortable going downhill and attacking the paint?

Stanford Robinson: That has always been my game, I feel like, for a while, and I just feel once I’m in the open court, then it’s just get to the rim as fast as you can. I was just comfortable.

How much more of an emphasis was getting that extra pass tonight?

Austin Etherington: I think that we’ve noticed that a lot of teams since we’ve previously not been shooting the ball, well they’ve been packing a little bit. So we knew we didn’t want to over-penetrate and knew the extra pass and one more pass is going to be there.

And tonight obviously we did that and we hit the best assists like we were saying. That’s one thing coach was always talking about, comparing the last year’s stats. And I think that’s what we averaged for the season. So pretty good for us as a team to get those stats.

What does it do for your confidence when you hit 3s, did you concentrate on shot fakes?

Austin Etherington: We kind of concentrate on that a lot of times. It wasn’t anything different. We didn’t make an emphasis on it as much just normal.

Did the game feel a lot more like last year’s team with all the assists?

Austin Etherington: Yeah, I mean, we definitely know that we’re not the same team as last year. We lost two guys who were top-five picks in the NBA Draft. Obviously we’re not going to be the same team.

But we just, we try to be our own team. We don’t want to look at last year, compare ourselves to last year as much, because we know we’re a different style team. We know we’re athletic and we know we play at a fast pace compared to last year half court as well and know we’ve got to run and score off the transition points like we did tonight.

How important was Evan Gordon tonight?

Austin Etherington: He’s always comfortable. Happened to be tonight where he got the points that he got, and he works hard like everyone else. And he deserved what he got tonight, and everyone’s happy for him.

Filed to: