Video, Quotes: Steve Pikiell reacts to loss to Indiana

  • 11/17/2013 8:22 pm in

Stony Brook coach Steve Pikiell met with the media following his team’s 90-74 loss to Indiana on Sunday at Assembly Hall.

Watch his postgame comments in the media player below:

Quotes are available after the jump.

On tonight’s game:

“Indiana is really good. Coach Crean is an awesome coach and that team plays hard always. We knew it was going to be a tough game coming in. Our key to the game was to not get beat on the foul line, and obviously that didn’t happen. We did not do a good job of keeping them off the foul line. They were averaging 37 free-throw attempts coming in, which I believe is leading the country after three games, and tonight we helped them up that with 49 trips to the foul line. Now they definitely will be leading the country in free-throw attempts after this game. Thirty-two is the most fouls Stony Brook has given in nine years of my being the head coach. We averaged 14 a game last year and tonight we just obviously fouled too much.”

On what was impressive about Indiana:

“I love their point guard and they’re athletic as can be. I love Noah Vonleh in the middle, they’re well coached, they rebound, and they’re versatile. Coach Crean has this team well prepared.”

On their game plan coming into tonight:

“We wanted to get the ball in to the post and we wanted to defend without fouling. They made both those things very tough for us by the way they attacked us. It was difficult for us to execute our game plan tonight.”

On what caused Indiana to pull away after the second half:

“Our key to the whole game was to not lose the game at the foul line. That second half we just continued to foul. I told our players, `You can’t defend the foul line.’ They’re good foul shooters and there’s no way you can play defense when they’re at the line. I think we are a better basketball team than we showed tonight, but they did a great job defending us and made our lives very difficult tonight with their length.”

On what he tells his team after tonight:

“I wanted to see where our team measured up against a really good team on the road, because tonight is our first road game of the season. We will take a lot of film away from tonight and we will learn from it. We will have to learn to defend without fouling, which we did for the first three games we played. Tonight that’s what really hurt us. We had to go deep into our bench and we haven’t had to do that this year. We’ve been one of the lowest fouling, best defensive teams around. Our defense is what we built this team around, and the new hand-check rules have really affected us. For the nine years I have been with this team, we have never fouled 32 times, so that’s something we have to make adjustments to. But we have some good players and we played hard, but you have to do more than just play hard against Indiana if you want to win.”

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