Men's Basketball

Postgame Quotes: Wisconsin vs. Indiana

Men's Basketball

Postgame Quotes: Wisconsin vs. Indiana

Postgame Quotes
Wisconsin vs. Indiana
Feb. 5, 2017
Madison, Wis. -- Kohl Center

UW Head Coach Greg Gard
Opening statement:
"Proud of our guys and how we found a way. I'm not going to claim it's our most intelligent display of basketball at times, but we were able to do enough good things at the right times, specifically making free throws, when we needed to. It was just enough to stave off any tie they were going to try to make…I thought Brevin Pritzl off the bench was really solid, did some really good things and didn't try to get outside his lane, so to speak. Overall team effort and it was really good in terms of how they kept picking each other up when something wouldn't go right. They were encouraging and tried to get things back on track, and like I said, contributions off the bench against today. Obviously with (Ethan) Happ and (Nigel) Hayes' numbers, they carried a lot of the scoring. To be able to come, continue to get people's best shot and people coming after us, we found another way to win yet again."
 
On what Brevin Pritzl showed in practice to earn himself 12 minutes of play:
"Well, I think over the last six to eight weeks, he started to get more of his swagger back. By that, I mean the appreciation for things other than shooting. Diving on the floor, taking charges, rebounding, taking care of the ball and all of those things that he was good at before he got hurt over a year ago. It's really taken him a long time to get back into that rhythm and I think for him mentally he was probably caught into the trap of, 'Shooting is going to get me back faster than anything else.' Really, it had to be all of those other things first. We know he can score, we know he shoots really well, but he had to be doing those other things too and that's what we've seen over the last margin of time. I don't know exactly how long, I'm giving you a guesstimate there, but he just kept getting more and more consistent. I brought him over with us different times during practice and I thought he handled it pretty well. I just kept liking what I was seeing. Like I said before, he stayed in his lane, didn't try to do too much, didn't try to make up for lost time. He just was a solid contributor, guarded very well for a guy that hasn't had a whole lot of live game defensive experience in those type of situations. I thought he did some really good things and he's starting to show that we can count on him."
 
On the defense holding Indiana's Thomas Bryant to 11 points:
"Yeah, I thought we did a pretty good job. I thought Ethan (Happ), individually, for the most part, made it hard for him to get into a comfort zone and was pretty physical with him. He did a good job when we did send the double team. We did trap it – we did a pretty good job with that."

Nigel Hayes
On finding ways to win today:
"Looking at our total field goals and field goals made, it doesn't look very good. Ethan (Happ), Mr. Reliable, went 8-for-10, so that's good to see. Other than that though, no one shot particularly well. Thank goodness there are two sides of a basketball (game). We were able to make up some things on the defensive end. This is a high-scoring Indiana team and to hold them to 60 points is something to be proud of."
 
Ethan Happ
On making clutch plays down the stretch:
"When it gets late in the game, you're going to dig deep. Any player in the position I was in would have made the same play by calling the timeout. We got lucky that I didn't fall out of bounds and was able to call timeout. On the steal, the ball was thrown a little outside and I was able to steal the ball and go to the other end to score."
 
Brevin Pritzl
On getting quality minutes to close out the game:
"I was just trying to help these guys out and get the offense moving. I'm just trying to make their jobs easier by making other people pay attention to me."

Indiana Head Coach Tom Crean
On the overall play of his team:
"We wanted to be aggressive, there's no question about that. When you look at what we're playing without, if you throw Collin (Hartman) in it, you take James Blackmon, Jr. and you put OG Anunoby in there, we're playing without 35 points and 15 rebounds every time we step out there right now. You throw that on the top of the fact that you're playing against the most experienced team in the country and you can't just go out there and allow them to just play the way they want to play and they're very good at that. We needed to bring aggressiveness to the game and we had a lot of deflections. We were very active and at the end of the day. A couple of possessions didn't go our way and a couple of possessions went their way. But our guys were in a great battle, mindset, they've been that way, they've been getting better. I don't think they've felt the burden of this at all, at least I haven't, I don't think they have. You have to take advantage of the opportunities you have and do the very best with them. Their effort, their energy, their will to win was excellent. As usual, both teams made some mistakes and we needed a couple more possessions to go our way. Give them (Wisconsin) credit, they capitalized a couple of times. Our defense was much better. They're undefeated when they shoot better than 45 percent from the field and we knew we couldn't let them just have an open field day on that. I'm sure they'll look at it, and Greg (Gard) will look at it and say they missed some shots they make, just like I'll be able to look at it and say we missed shots that we make. Not to mention having a pretty good shot maker not in there. But, our battle and our competitive level was really, really high and that's what's important and we'll build from it, I guess."
 
On the improvement of Ethan Happ from last year:
"He's improved, as they all do here at Wisconsin and he's a very good player."
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Players Mentioned

Ethan Happ

#22 Ethan Happ

F
6' 10"
Redshirt Sophomore
Nigel Hayes

#10 Nigel Hayes

F
6' 8"
Senior
Brevin Pritzl

#1 Brevin Pritzl

G
6' 3"
Redshirt Freshman

Players Mentioned

Ethan Happ

#22 Ethan Happ

6' 10"
Redshirt Sophomore
F
Nigel Hayes

#10 Nigel Hayes

6' 8"
Senior
F
Brevin Pritzl

#1 Brevin Pritzl

6' 3"
Redshirt Freshman
G