Postgame Quotes
Wisconsin vs. Western Kentucky
December 13, 2017
Kohl Center  |  Madison, Wis.

Wisconsin Head Coach Greg Gard
 
On the play of his team:
"Extremely happy for our guys, especially being through the teams that they've played, places they've been, getting tested, and had their feet to the fire. Maybe a little sooner then they were ready for, but I'm extremely proud of how they responded tonight. It wasn't pretty, but they continued to fight and that's something I've never had to worry about with this group is their resiliency and their ability to bounce back."

On the last play of the game:
"We've used that from a standpoint to try to free up the inbounder to get a better look down the floor to throw it a little farther and relieve the pressure off that. We've used it a couple times in practice, but that's the first time I've seen it work in a game. There's risk with anything, there's risk in throwing it deep too and nobody touching it and they get the ball back with a few seconds to go, so we were gonna take a look at it and see if we could get the screen, if not we were gonna throw down the floor." 

Wisconsin Freshman Guard Brad Davison
 
On the final play:
"Coach [Joe Krabbenhoft] and Coach (Greg) Gard drew it up after we called a timeout the first time. We saw they had someone guarding the inbounder. So, my job was to let him run me over and draw the foul. It was a great play call by coach and it worked perfectly."

Wisconsin Sophomore Guard Brevin Pritzl
 
On the team's shooting:
"It feels good when everyone is hitting shots, making 3s and taking them confidently. That's just something that we have to keep doing. Taking shots with the confidence that they will go down, and then they will."

Wisconsin Junior Ethan Happ
 
On getting the win after a number of close losses:
"It feels good, especially because we've had the ball not bounce our way in a lot of those losses. We've made mistakes in those games and we made mistakes tonight too, which we'll have to address, but it was nice to have the ball bounce our way."

Wisconsin Sophomore Forward Aleem Ford
 
On his success shooting in the game:
"Western Kentucky just zoned in on Ethan (Happ) and doubled off my guy. Ethan did a good job of finding me in the right spots, and I was hitting them tonight."

Western Kentucky Head Coach Rick Stansbury
 
Opening statement:
"Give Wisconsin credit, they made enough plays to find a way to win the game. Greg (Gard) has lost some guys and he's doing a heck of a job piecing that team back together. He has them playing hard and smart and they were a lot better tonight than they were Saturday, that's for sure. Everybody will talk about the last play, but there are plenty of plays that happen before that. That (last) play will get magnified, but that play didn't beat us. You can go back to free throws, you can go back to not getting stops when we needed to. Again, they have a good team. (Ethan) Happ is a load in there. One thing I thought they did exceptionally well was shoot the basketball. They had some guys step up and make some shots. Davison made them all night long. He's a terrific young man and will be a heck of a player here for four years."
 
On what the officials said about the last call:
"I'm not going to put the blame on one play, but as it turned out it was an important play. There are a lot more plays that we could've made to not be in that situation. I told my players to be aware of the guy sliding up and trying to take a charge, that's what you do. Don't put yourself in a position on the road to make a 50-50 call. Give [Wisconsin] credit, though. They won the game. Give Greg some credit. He's finding things and they'll be good going forward."
 
On his team's effort:
"If you ask me what I'm getting out of my team, how I feel about what they're giving me I couldn't be prouder. They're giving me everything they've got. Could we play better? Yes, we could play better. At the end of the day, when you walk off that court and you feel like your guys laid it down for you, you can live with outcomes. We have to keep getting better."