HD Video: Fran McCaffery reacts to loss to Indiana

  • 03/02/2013 10:30 pm in

Fran McCaffery met with the media following Iowa’s 73-60 loss to Indiana on Saturday night at Assembly Hall.

Watch and listen to his comments in the embedded media player below:

Quotes after the jump.

On Iowa’s struggles in the first half:

“There were too many turnovers in the first half. The second half was pretty good. We were giving offensive rebounds up to guys we should not have given them up to. To me, the disappointing thing was that we had a chance to get it to five before the half and we missed consecutive free throws. If we were down under ten at the half, it would have been a different game. We were not in sync offensively, but at the same time I’m really proud of our fight. When we made our run, they made runs as well, which is what you would expect a really good team to do. They have enough weapons, enough experience and enough poise that they are going to be hard to catch.”

On not being able to get stops defensively:

“It was one of those games that was pretty physical, so they were calling a lot of fouls. I thought they did what they had to do and called a good game on both ends of the court.”

On Devyn Marble:

“It was good that we got him going early. That was important because it helped settle him down. In the second half we just started setting him up more. He got a good mixture of loose balls and transition scoring and then we set him up. His game tonight was a combination of all of that.”

On the plays designed to open the second half:

“That was just really good execution. We had run that same set in the first half five or six times, we just were not as effective or efficient as we were the second half. We talked about it at halftime and they executed much better.”

On Iowa’s continued struggles in the first half this season:

“I wouldn’t really call it a freeze-up, I’d call it a really good defensive effort by a terrific defensive team tonight.”

On Eric May:

“He was phenomenal. He guarded small guys, he guarded big guys, he played a guard spot, he played forward, he got rebounds and ran the break, he was executing in the half court and he was scoring. He was fabulous.”

On his message to the team this point in the season:

“My message now is no different than any other game. I’m going to hold my guys accountable for what we should have or could have done better or differently and I’m going to pat them on the back for what they did well. Just because we lost doesn’t mean we did everything horribly. We struggled in the first half and they showed a lot of character in the locker room. I’m still very proud of them in many aspects of this game. We have to individually improve enough so that the whole gets that much better. If you told me we were going to play on the road and turn it over 14 times, get out-rebounded, and only score 14 points the first half, I’d think would get blown-out, but we were right there in this. There’s a lot of positives I take from this game.”

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