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INDIANA UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 28, 2016

Tom Crean

Bloomington, Indiana

Nebraska - 87, Indiana - 83

COACH CREAN: I really haven't had a chance to study the stats. Will do that later. But to me, they did a great job they made more plays than we did. I'm not sure what the numbers are, but there were too many times we didn't get a hand up to them to challenge shots.

But we didn't challenge shots enough. Made some turnovers that we just can't make. And itâ€™s hard to get across to any team, but especially when you get into league play when it's magnified so much is the mental errors, and we had too many of them tonight and far too many. There's a list of them. And we've got to get out of it. We've got to continue to understand how to not make the game hard for ourselves.

We made some like it was our first game. And our first game we actually played really, really well. It's just a matter of understanding how simple we have to make the game, whether it's taking one more dribble, whether it's taking one less dribble, whether it's driving it all the way through the paint.

And some of the mistakes we made tonight were out of unselfishness. Guys passed up shots. One stands out. OG's wide open, Juwan turns, he throws a drop pass and Juwan is ready to rebound the ball. That makes no sense.

And we've got to just tighten up. So I'm clear on that. I don't need to see the stat sheet to know that. We'll get into the film. And told them it's going to be a short night for them because we'll be back getting it figured out tomorrow and getting ready for what will be an incredible battle for us on Saturday with Louisville.

Q. Â Update on Juwan Morgan?
COACH CREAN: It seems to be a bruise. I think we were all extremely fearful when that happened. And frankly I've not seen him in that -- I don't remember him being in that kind of pain when his shoulder went out a year ago.

Obviously we're fearful for that but it looks to be a bruise. And he'll get it evaluated tonight, and I can't give you more of an update than that. It certainly didn't appear at this point to be anything -- it's a tough bruise, right, when you go down like that.

But it doesn't appear to be anything that would be overly serious.

Q. Â You talked yesterday about you had seven guys that never played in a Big Ten game before. But it seemed the veterans were having as much trouble?
COACH CREAN: One of those veterans that hasnâ€™t played a Big Ten game is Josh Newkirk. Right? Yeah, James Blackmon, didn't play in a Big Ten game last year.

Again, I don't know if it's that. We can't have the mental errors. I'm not sure if those mental errors it wouldn't have mattered who we were playing. They played excellent. They played excellent.

We knew they are very aggressive on the backboards. They want to get to the basket. They're shooting -- they made some shots -- we didn't have rhythm because we didn't get our hands up. It's beyond baffling because it was the same type of thing.

Granted we have, everybody has issues from time to time in their ball-screen coverage or their post defense or their ball pressure or their switching. Everybody goes through that. But there should not be an inordinate amount of challenges. It didn't have anything to do with experience, the lack of experience. The hands have got to go up.

Q. Â Question on effort?
COACH CREAN: I don't know. I'm not able to sit there and watch the game on the big screen. I don't know if it's effort. I haven't seen the film, and I haven't really read the stats sheet. I'm telling you what I think, so I'm sure I'll find some things when I get into the film. I don't have the vantage point that you have of the film.

Q. Â I was just curious, is it as much effort?
COACH CREAN: I don't think we got beat on effort. I don't think we got beat on effort. My general opinion, I may change it tomorrow. I'm not going to tell you. But I don't feel like that. I feel like we made some mental errors. And I feel like at times we were trying to do too much to get the ball to people.

So you're pointing out a couple of things. I don't think we've had too many teams at Indiana that have gotten beat on effort. Do you?

So I wouldn't assume that tonight is one of those cases. If we got beat on effort, as hard as they were playing we would have got blown out by 30. It was a close game all the way down to the wire. They played really hard. We just didn't play as well.

Q. Â What about the second half without Rob Johnson in there? He was in foul trouble?
COACH CREAN: It really hurt us. We really realized in that situation how good Rob. I had a pretty good idea how good Rob is, but playing without him for us tonight, I got a real indication of how good he is and how you much we missed him.

He's a stabilizing force for us and he came back into the game a little bit, he made some shots and tried to get into the gaps and lane, and that's not what our game is right now. Our game is drive it, if there's a clear path to the basket, let's take it. There's mistakes we made tonight in the game that we'll get corrected with when we shot, when we didn't, the drive, those type of things.

The advantage of being into the double bonus early and they take advantage of that. Now, is that effort? That's just we're not understanding what the game is giving them.

Q. Â Webster kind of got them off to a quick start getting to the rim. Is that why you had to mix it up?
COACH CREAN: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. He and Watson do a great job of getting downhill. And the bigs, as much as with it being back up into the ball. And we can't have that.

And our zone, they made a couple of shots in it, but there was a time when our zone was doing a really good job for us and doing some things in the game, we went to switching and things like that. The game is always giving you something and then we get back and read and we watch the film.

And I'm real comfortable being in it like this. I'm real comfortable when you hit adversity. I'm good with that. We'll figure out how to overcome it. We'll find out who can learn the same thing. It's one game.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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