HD Video: Matt Painter reacts to loss to Indiana
Matt Painter met with the media following Purdue’s 83-55 loss to Indiana on Saturday at Assembly Hall.
Watch and listen to his postgame comments in the embedded media player below:
Quotes after the jump.
On is he is running out of ways to get his players to play hard:
“There’s no doubt you’re frustrated, we just have to do a better job of maintaining that consistent effort. Sometimes its just a breakdown, sometimes it is effort, it’s a little bit of everything. Then when you don’t consistently shoot the basketball, when you do get a good shot and you don’t knock it down. If you look at the four guys that started for us that shot the most, two-for-seven, three-for-ten, five-for-twelve, and two-for-eight. We had some good looks especially inside; we have to convert some of those. It gets very frustrating for them and it makes it worse. You throw on top of that you’re playing the best team in the country; it’s a recipe for disaster.”
On knowing they had to get off to fast start:
“We talked about the last game, obviously they are a very good team but they score 44 points in transition and off the glass. Lets make them score in the half court and they’ve proven that they do score in the half court but not at the rate that they do off the glass and transition. They have 17 points on our 11 turnovers in the first half. I haven’t seen what they had for the game because it doesn’t matter. You just can’t turn the ball over 11 times on the road vs. a team like that and expect to have success.”
On if he was trying to send a message by starting Sandi Marcius and Jacob Lawson to start the second half:
“I just thought that they played harder and you can’t coach effort at times. When you get a young team and you talk about it, you have to play hard every single night and you have to be focused. You’re not young in February when those guys have played a lot. You know its, you can’t use that as an excuse, I just thought that those two guys gave us more energy then the other guys playing.”
On how Christian Watford guarding A.J. Hammons was effective:
“No matter who was going to guard Hammons we’re going to get him the basketball. We have to get him to be consistent and be able to finish plays. He’s not been an offensive guy really in the past and now we’re trying to establish him as low post presence. He’s just got to be able to convert some things. We have to do a better job of getting him involved and he’s got to do a better job of holding his position. They did a good job; they were going to use Cody (Zeller) to come over and double him a little bit and block his shot. We have to a better job of helping him and he’s got to do a better job of being ready to play.”
On how Hammons did not score until the 13 minute mark:
“That’s what I talked about in the first game; he scored a lot of points in the first game against Indiana after the game, score when it counts. We need him to be able to start games and establish that low post presence.”
On what makes Indiana so much better this year than last:
“They’ve been good, they have better players than they’ve had in the past that helps. The thing that is better this year is that they’re a better defensive team. They weren’t a good defensive team before, they do different things, and they mix defenses. A lot of times when you mix defenses you never get good at one thing. I think he’s been really smart in sticking with his man to man. (Victor) Oladipo is a difference maker because you can put him on a lot of different people. Across the board they are just a better defensive team, and you could argue that they’re the best offensive team in the country, it’s a pretty good mix.”
Filed to: Matt Painter, Purdue Boilermakers