LAHAINA, Hawaii – Max Bielfeldt and Robert Johnson met with the media following Indiana’s 82-78 loss to Wake Forest in the 2015 Maui Jim Maui Invitational at the Lahaina Civic Center.
Watch the full press conference below:
Quotes are available after the jump.
Q. I guess for either of you, but Max, maybe for you, you guys are up nine there. You kind of had them back on their heels and then I guess what happened after that?
MAX BIELFELDT: Yeah, we got a little bit of a run there. Just didn’t execute. That was the point we tried to emphasize all year. Unfortunately, it came up again where we get those runs going in that eight-minute span, and we have to beat a team that pushes that out.
It’s tough to say exactly what happened, but I think just being able to come together and run our offense to perfection at that point is really what we need to do.
Q. Robert, I know defense has a lot of components to it. But they were able to drive on you, got inside a lot, 50-something points in paint. What was the issue on the perimeter defense and not being able to stop the drives?
ROBERT JOHNSON: I think it came from, first off, a lack of communication, that was a big part of it. And second thing, I’d just say a mindset. For myself and everybody else we’ve got to continue to build a defensive mindset that we’re going to go out there and stop you.
Q. Max, with 3.2 seconds, Collin had the ball out of bounds. What was the plan there and what went wrong with that play?
MAX BIELFELDT: The plan was to throw it to me and find someone cutting. They threw it up and had a lot of hands in there for that long pass, and it just didn’t quite work out as we wanted it to.
Q. For either of you, they were really the aggressor from, it seemed, the outset. Were you surprised by the way they came out pushing?
MAX BIELFELDT: No, I mean, we knew they were going to be a physical team and it was going to be a test of our physicality as well. Just a lot of those rebounds kind of came off short and they used their physicality to push us under the basket. And we’ve got to adjust to that and get better and not let that happen again.
Q. I guess just to follow up on that, at some level do you feel like there was maybe just y’all not being able to match them physically, particularly in that rebounding game? Not that you couldn’t, but you weren’t able to get that up today?
MAX BIELFELDT: I think today stats show that we didn’t, but I think we had the potential to. I think developing some of these younger guys and really embracing the physicality can really push us to that next level.
Today we learned a hard lesson and we’re going to learn from it and do everything we can to next time we see a team like that, that we’re going to embrace it and push back as much as we can and hopefully do the same thing to them.
Q. Max, how stunned are you that you’re playing in the loser’s bracket and not the winner’s bracket come tomorrow?
MAX BIELFELDT: It obviously wasn’t something we planned for. We were hoping to go all the way, and the first obstacle is tough because it just didn’t go our way today.
Wake Forest is a great team though. They’ve got some really good players and they capitalized on some of our weaknesses, so you’ve got to give them credit there. But we feel as a team we could have played better and done more things offensively and defensively to make this a game we could have won.
Q. Max, give me your take on all their points in the paint. It was 52 for the game. All the penetrations, Devin getting inside. What wasn’t working for you guys?
MAX BIELFELDT: I’d have to go back and watch the film, but from what I saw, they crashed a lot of guys to the paint and they’ve got those 50-50 balls. We were sometimes turning our head to look at the basket and wait for the rebound instead of going to find the man and hit him out and clear out some space. We kind of resorted to some bad habits there.
Filed to: 2015 Maui Invitational, Max Bielfeldt, Robert Johnson