Jan. 7, 2009
Recap |
Final Stats
Penn State Head Coach Ed DeChellis
Q: How important was your offensive rebounding during the game?
A: Well, we had a bunch. I'm trying to get them to put them back in the basket. Getting some points off some of those offensive rebounds. I thought Andrew Jones started off nice. He started out with a flurry there and kept it going. We have to rebound the ball on both ends of the floor. I thought we did that well tonight. We did a great job rebounding the basketball.
Q: The guys talked about landing that first punch. Could you talk about getting to a fast start?
A: I think that was important. I felt we needed to set the tempo this evening. I challenged our kids to do that. I thought they came out well to start the game. Purdue is a great basketball team. They're going to come back and make basketball plays, as well. I was more proud of our team. We got down in the second half and were able to withstand it and make some plays to get back. I am really proud of them for that. We didn't timeout; they never really got overly excited. I think that's a good sign.
Q: In the second half when they went on that run, what did you guys do defensively?
A: We switched up a little bit. We went zone, and they were chopping us up.
We weren't in a flow defensively, and when the kids were comfortable, we went to man. We did a good job locking them up and getting back into the flow of things. We contained the ball better. We weren't containing the ball, and they were driving past us and kicking it out. It kind of got us out of whack for a little bit. The rest of the game we did pretty well defensively.
Penn State Player Quotes
Q: What was the defensive job you guys did at the start of the game and for the last 10 minutes?
Drew Jones: Defensively, I think we had a lot of breakdowns when they went on that run. We tried to switch up and go zone. They hit a couple of shots.
Coach asked us, "What do we want to do?" We said we'd like to go back and, for that last six or seven minutes, we just buckled down, communicated well, switched when we wanted to switch and, most especially, we rebounded the basketball.
Q: Talk about getting on that run right off the get-go when we went up 14 to start, especially when they were without Hummel and Kramer.
Talor Battle: Well, coach talked about throwing the first punch, and we did that, but sometimes that's not the best thing, and they came back. They exerted a lot of energy early, and they were able to come back. The only run that really counts is the last one, and we made that one tonight. We'll walk out of here with a win.
Q: Was there any sense of panic when they went up four?
Danny Morrissey: They went up four? To be honest, I didn't even know they were up four. They did a great job. We gave them some open looks, and they took advantage of it. We've been down before, and we know how to win now.
That's something we didn't know how to do last year. We just stayed the course and knew we could get it done against a difficult opponent.
Purdue head coach Matt Painter
Opening statement:
"I was proud of our guys' effort after you get down 17-2. It had the making for a blow out. Obviously when you lose guys like Robbie (Hummel) and Chris (Kramer), as a coach you're going to have a lack of experience in terms of guys who are starting the game. They (Penn State) just dominated us on the glass. They got four or five offensive rebounds in the first couple possessions. You have to be hooked up and ready to rebound the basketball, and we were not. I thought after that blitz, our guys did some very good things out there. We did a better job of sharing the basketball and being patient on the offensive end. I thought defensively we did some better things after that right up until the eight, nine ten minute mark when we had a four point lead. Then I thought we pressed a little bit, took some ill advised shots, and then we had some breakdowns on the defensive end. We let
(Danny) Morrisey get loose a couple times. We let (Talor) Battle get by us on the drive, and then we weren't able to finish the defensive stops once again on the rebounds. You can play great defense, but if you can't finish it with a rebound it negates all your hard work."
On this Penn State team:
"Last year when they went 5-5 in the last 10 games with those young guys and playing all those freshmen, I thought that was really going to springboard them into this season, and you can see the experience they have and the confidence they have. We simply couldn't keep Andrew Jones off the boards.
Obviously (Talor) Battle's good. Obviously (Stanley) Pringle's good.
Obviously (Jamelle) Cornley has had a very good career. They've made improvements, but they've also made improvements together, which I think is important. They have a core of guys that are together that was with them last year, and that's very important. I'm very impressed with their team."
On Penn State's impact on the Big Ten:
"I think everybody in the Big Ten takes Penn State seriously. It's a by-product of youth when you start four freshmen that sometimes aren't going to be dialed in. That's just the way it is. Now, with a couple seniors in Pringle and Cornley and Battle evolving into an all-conference type guy, now you have those other pieces with guys who got a lot of experience last year.
Everybody in the Big Ten understands that they're good. Anytime you have good lead guards like that with quickness and the ability to create for themselves you're gonna have a chance to win a lot of gamesŠThey almost won at Wisconsin and everybody knows how difficult that is, so everybody in the Big Ten realizes that Penn State is going to be a team to be reckoned with."
