Jan. 16, 2008

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Penn State Director of Athletic Medicine Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli

What is the extent of Geary Claxton¹s injury?

The full extent of the injury cannot be fully determined yet. He clearly has an injury to the ACL, and what we need to see if there are any secondary injuries like damage to the meniscus or cartilage. It wasn¹t a contact injury by any means.

How long is a player typically out with that kind of injury?

It depends on the secondary injuries that can be present. Most of the time, you are looking at six months to get back to training hard. And then anywhere from 3-6 months of game preparation.

Does that mean it looks like he is out for the rest of the year?

Yes.

Does it look like he has a tear?

From all the physical testing, it looks like he has a tear to the ACL.

Penn State Coach Ed DeChellis

How devastating is this injury?

Definitely for Geary. You know I just took time to tell him I loved him and hugged him. You know he has been a great kid for us for the three-and-a-half years he has been with us. He was a great ball player, great student, a great person for our program. I just feel horrible for him. I really can¹t put it in words. He has worked really hard. He wanted to do great things this year. He could have done some great things for us. But, now we¹ve got to figure out what our next move is and regroup as a team. We need to get back to work and figure out what we are going to do.

Can you talk about what impact it has on you guys losing Geary with all the things he has brought?

Well, you know he was our leading scorer, our leading rebounder, best perimeter defender, he could get you a basket when you needed it. A lot of our sets were run for him. So, we¹ve got to go back and figure out what we are going to do there with all the different stuff we have put in for the past two months. We need to cut some things out that were geared for him and add some new things for the guys that will have to step in and play. We have two days to try to revamp what we are doing because, again, he was our best defender and rebounder. We have to go back and look at everything. It is going to be a long couple days.

What went wrong tonight?

Well we just started bad offensively. We had wide-open shots that we were not making. I thought offensively they (Wisconsin) played well, then Geary went down seven minutes into the first half. I could just tell from our kids we were not with it. There is no excuse for that, don¹t get me wrong. We played very poorly tonight. We didn¹t have the same zip and energy we needed to play a top 20 team in the country.

How difficult will it be to get people to accept new roles with such a young team that you have?

Well the young guys are going to have to play. D.J. Jackson is going to have to play a lot of minutes and Andrew Jones is going to have to play a lot of minutes. The guards are going to have to play more time. Guys are going to have to play different roles now. Things definitely changed. We have to step up and accept it. We are going to have to filter these guys with new roles as quickly as we can because we are playing a top five team this Sunday. So we have to get that figured out pretty quickly.

Did the players know about Geary at halftime?

I think they knew before that.

Penn State Junior Jamelle Cornley

What happened out there tonight?

We ran into a very good team. This is a game where, when you look on paper you don¹t really understand why they are ranked or how they are ranked when their leading scorer played like only seven minutes last year. You don¹t really understand how good they are, but they are a well-coached team and they execute and break down defenses. They were very patient and they knew what they wanted to do. At the same time they have players such as Flowers, who came into this game only making eight shots. They caught fire, and that is what happened.

Could you talk about how you were trying to come back without Geary in the game?

Well, it¹s not a secret that he is the best and most dominant player on the team. But, anytime you lose a player of that magnitude whether he is a first year player or a senior, it takes away from what you want to do, but it also allows other people to step up. So we started to make runs in the second half, but we kept trading two for two or three for three. We were already down 16. So it gets very discouraging exchanging buckets because you begin to lose your energy. They were a very good team though and they got some high quality shots. Many of which were well contested and those are the shots you can¹t do anything about. That is what is discouraging.

What adjustments did you guys make to try to contain their offense and help yourselves on offense as well?

Well first we ran a full court press, which helped in some cases I think. That sped up the game quite a bit. And then we wanted to get our shooters the ball. We had some baseline screens and made them come off. We set down screens for Danny. And a lot of those shots that usually get made did not go down for us tonight. They did not spark momentum.

Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan

The way your team executed on offense tonight, could you give us your thoughts?

I thought we had good balance on the floor, we didn¹t force a whole lot. A couple of the passes and the turnover total was maybe just floating the ball a little too much at times; and then a couple of things that we did in reaction to something that they put on us. We just needed to keep our composure a little more and cut those turnovers down to about ten. But, when you¹re shooting that kind of percentage, that can make up for some of those. So, I thought offensively we did a pretty good job at taking what they gave us.

What about Mike Flowers tonight?

Both he and Jaybo [Jason Bohannon] did a great job at chasing and they¹ve [Penn State] got very good three-point shooters. They¹ve got great offensive rebounders. The way they¹ve been playing wasn¹t by accident. We know how they¹re feeling, when you lose a Claxton, we lost Hughes. They kept at it. They came out in the second half and cut into it and were doing some really nice things, but I think eventually we were able to turn that and then extend the lead a little bit and then make them have to adapt to us. They had it going there that first five minutes, I think they scored on eight of their first ten possessions, anybody that was keeping track of that, so you have to give them credit for the comeback they were attempting.

The start of the game at home or on the road, the efficiency they had out there, especially on the road, you have to be pretty pleased with that. Well, sometimes you grind gears early but then you have to get it done in another stage of the game. It¹s great to start that way but you can¹t ever say okay we did this, now we can cruise a little bit, you can never do that either, it¹s still 40 minutes.

Flowers and Butch kept it going, did that show what you need from the seniors?

Greg did a great job for us defensively too, people see the ten points, he was four of four, he didn¹t miss a shot. But he did a nice job defensively making that change on shots and making sure people couldn¹t get to the rim. He¹s another senior that intruded quite a bit. I¹m not taking anything away from Brian and Michael, don¹t misunderstand me. I¹m adding Greg Stiemsma into that.

How much different is Penn State without Claxton, how did it change your strategy when he went down?

We didn¹t change anything. We had our game plan coming in and then when Jackson was hitting those jumpers it looked like Claxton to us. They still have guys that can score, we didn¹t say look this guy¹s out, let¹s do this now. If there was a great point guard that did a lot of penetrating and did one certain thing and then he¹s out of the game and they didn¹t have somebody like him that¹s one thing, or a seven footer that totally dominates the paint, then that¹s another thing. Claxton¹s a very good player, multi-dimensional so we just stuck to what we normally do defensively.