Coach Tom Crean met with the media following Indiana’s 70-69 loss to Nebraska at the Devaney Center on Wednesday night. Watch the press conference in high-definition video in the embedded player below:
Quotes after the jump …
Opening Statement:
“First off, this league has 12 teams that can play with anybody. We’re one of them, as is Nebraska. I don’t know who I said it to yesterday, but you can’t get too concerned with records with anybody in this league right now. We certainly never played Nebraska like they’d won one game. We knew how good they were. Our guys had great edge tonight; they had excellent energy. We did so many good things. We played very well, we had excellent ball movement. We were going against a team that was only allowing 22% from the three in the league, and we got some really good looks. We held this team to 38%, but we didn’t make enough of the big stops. We made some, we were very locked in to what they wanted to do but at the same time, they made the plays.”
“For us, we’ve got to take care of the ball better. I think we’re going to go back and look at the film and we’re going to look at the turnovers in the second half and just see how excruciatingly painful those were for us, because those turned into more easy baskets for Nebraska. They’re a very good team. I’ve said it since they got in the league. They are extremely well-coached, Doc is an excellent coach. They are so sound in so many areas, and we knew they weren’t going to go away and we had to put them away. And we didn’t do that. We did not do that. At the end of the game, we had a very good look, and we probably made it a little more challenging and difficult than it needed to be to give ourselves a chance to win it. We got a shot, we really did. We were in that position; we didn’t want to be in that position but you just deal with it.”
“Now, we just got a group of guys that have an edge, that have a desire, and we’ve got to make sure that we refocus them, that we reenergize them, and we do not let them get discouraged. We make sure that we understand disappointment is inevitable in life, but discouragement is our choice and we choose not to have it. So that’s our biggest goal right now as a coaching staff with our team is to get them to understand there were a lot of very good things but we did not close this game. And there were some things that reared their head tonight in the form of turnovers, in the form of some missed assignments defensively, and they made us pay, as good teams do.”
On if Nebraska’s defense had a cumulative effect that led to forced turnovers:
“Well, that’s a good question. I’m sure some of it, but I think some of it was just our strength with the basketball and some decision-making. But again, they were good defensively, but so were we. We held them to 38%, I mean we shot 51% for the game. It wasn’t like we couldn’t get shots. But when the game is tight and you don’t put it away, those turnovers come back and get you.”
On Nebraska’s offense and the contributions of Bo Spencer:
“I think they’re a lot more than that. Now, he’s quick and athletic off the dribble and he got hot, but we knew McCray was ready to break out, there’s no doubt about that. We know Talley’s getting healthier. We know Diaz is an incredibly hard matchup because he can score over either shoulder. I think they’ve got a lot of pieces. I think that speed and quickness starts with him, with Bo Spencer. I’ll give him credit, I don’t know the young man but he did a phenomenal job tonight of really using his teammates. They’ve got some veterans and they played like that at the end. They made some tough plays. We’ve got some guys that have been through it, and we didn’t take care of the ball as well.”
Filed to: Nebraska Cornhuskers, Tom Crean