HD Video: IU players react to win over Minnesota
Jordan Hulls (19 points, four rebounds), Victor Oladipo (20 points, six rebounds, three steals), Cody Zeller (18 points, six rebounds, three blocks) and Yogi Ferrell (13 points, eight assists) met with the media following Indiana’s 88-81 win over Minnesota on Saturday at Assembly Hall.
Watch and listen to their postgame comments in the embedded media players below:
Quotes after the jump.
Cody Zeller
On how they hung with a good rebounding team:
“That was a big key for us. Everyone, we had to have five guys rebounding. I was just trying to get [Trevor] Mbakwe out of it, even if I don’t get the rebound, just take him out of the play because he’s such a good rebounder. Our guards did a pretty good job of rebounding; that was a big key for us.”
On whether the team has built more trust with each other, centering around Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell:
“Somewhat. We have so many weapons that can do so many things that make us a tough team to guard. Whether it’s me and Christian [Watford] working inside or some of our shooters outside, we always try to move the ball around and see what happens.”
Victor Oladipo
On his fouls on 3-point shooters:
“The first two, we work on that all the time, it was just being undisciplined. As a leader on defense, I cannot make those mistakes. To be honest, I felt like I almost blew the game away. That’s nine free throws that I just let them have. On the last one I need to be more disciplined and stay down. I was making dumb, little mistakes towards the end of the game. I shouldn’t be doing that. I’m a junior now and I’m a leader, and I can’t be making dumb mistakes like that. My teammates look up to me, especially on the defensive end, and when I make mistakes that’s not good for our team. I have to go back to the drawing board, see what I did wrong, and correct it. It’s going to be big for us. Plays like that, I’ve lost plays in the past when we were doing the same thing. I need to be way more disciplined than that. Just work on it and I’ll be good.”
On how he feels coming out of this game:
“I feel good, but at the same time I know there’s a lot of stuff we need to work on. There are big games down the road. We have to watch this tape and see what happened in the second half, what we did wrong and correct it. There’s really good teams that are coming up and we need to be ready for them.”
Jordan Hulls
On the difference between the two halves:
“We just have to do a better job of playing the full game. We played real well in the first half and then they came back, we knew they were going to come back and put up a fight. They’re a good basketball team. We just have to do a lot better job communicating on defense, pushing the ball more on offense, do what we did best at the end of the first half.”
On what went right in the first half:
“I’d say we did a good job of moving the ball. Our defense is really what got us going. Victor [Oladipo] did a great job on the ball, getting steals, getting fast breaks. Just doing different things on the defensive end that led to our offense and that’s what we want to come in and do and that’s what we have to do if we want to keep on winning. The second half, we can’t accept that, we know we have to play a lot better.”
On the struggles at the free throw line:
“We’ve got to hit free throws. That’s going to get us if we don’t hit our free throws. A lack of focus I guess.”
Filed to: Cody Zeller, Jordan Hulls, Victor Oladipo, Yogi Ferrell