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PURDUE UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 31, 2018Matt HaarmsDakota MathiasP.J. ThompsonWest Lafayette, Indiana Maryland - 67, Purdue - 75 THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. You have had back-to-back challenging games. This one challenged you, but you've pulled through and pulled out the win. What does that say about your ability to finish, maybe the resilience of this team? DAKOTA MATHIAS: I think it says a lot about the maturity of our group. I think we learned a lot of hard lessons early on in the year, especially at The Bahamas. That's what intelligent teams do, you learn from your mistakes. Especially defensively I thought we were really good. We struggled the last couple games with ball screen defense, I thought we improved that. Taking up Anthony and Kevin, making it tough on them in ball screen D. Q. P.J., when you're playing against a team like Maryland, how much are you almost playing against yourselves where you know you need to limit your own mistakes as opposed to focusing on matchups? P.J. THOMPSON: Yeah, we approach each game the same way. Doesn't matter if we're playing Maryland or Michigan State. We always focus on Purdue, doing the best we can to be the better version of ourselves. Even though they lost a few guys, they've been in a lot of close games. Obviously they have really good players, because it was a fight tonight for us. We normally want to focus on ourselves. Q. P.J., you were especially disruptive defensively early. Seemed like you were getting your hands on the ball a lot. What was the emphasis for you to start? P.J. THOMPSON: We try to do that every game. When you're guarding guys like Cowan and Huerter, who is so good with the ball offensively, you just want to make it tough on them. Obviously they play a lot of minutes. The offense is pretty much ran through them. Players like that are going to get there. You just have to make it as tough as you can. I thought we did a really good job on them. I thought we did really well. Q. P.J., you don't sound great, but Vince probably isn't doing great right now either. What kind of performance was that for him to go out there? P.J. THOMPSON: Vince is a tough guy. I mean, he's built for moments like these. I thought he played really well. He didn't have his best shooting game, but I thought he did other things to disrupt the game. He passed the ball well, played good defense. Even though he was under the weather a little bit, to come out there and do that, pretty impressive. Q. Dakota, you didn't hit shots early on, but that seemed to be they inhibited your ability to take advantage of what you were doing defensively, then make it tougher offensively when you're trying to defend in transition. DAKOTA MATHIAS: I mean, any time you miss shots, it's tough. That's part of the maturity thing I was talking about. That would have negatively affected us in the past. Got our heads down, they'd score, we'd be down 5 or 10 points. I think we matured and realized we got to get stops on defense regardless of what's going to happen offensively. Q. There was the one moment in the second half when they cut it to three points, you went on a 7-0 run. Is that something that comes with experience? MATT HAARMS: It's the way we got to be as a team. When they cut it to three, that kind of puts us on an alert to have to play better. You have to lock in on defense, see what we're doing wrong. We know if we're making mistakes, it's when they're going to score. We have to lock in defensively at that point. This is an every game thing. There's always going to be tough spots in every game. It's good for us. It shapes us as a group, those tough moments. We learn from that every single time. Q. How have you been able to block out all the talk about this team, the streak, just focus on the day-to-day grind? DAKOTA MATHIAS: It's important. I think our coaching staff has done a good job of keeping us on edge. There are a lot of mistakes we've been making. A couple games, if we would have lost, it would have magnified on some of our mistakes. Even when you win, you can learn on the stuff you mess up. We do a good job of watching film, correcting those things regardless of outside noise, what people are saying. Q. Matt, some of the offense you've been able to provide lately, you have a lot of success rolling to the basket, people losing you. Are people defending you differently, or is it the natural evolution of you guys offensively? MATT HAARMS: Of course, we run different plays when I'm in the game versus Isaac. It's just their defense having to adjust to our offense. When we have Isaac out there, he's a human sledgehammer, ramming through people down low. Guys are, like, digging down, digging their heels into the sand, ready to go to war. Then I come in, I'm running around, slipping ball screens, rolling to the basket hard. It's an adjustment for those guys. They really got to get used to that. Q. P.J., what are you seeing right now in the dynamic where Isaac and Vince are playing off of each other? P.J. THOMPSON: They're just reading the defense. Sometimes teams double four to five. Isaac works on his passing every day. If he's seeing the defense really well, making the right read. Same with Vince. If he's making the iso's in the post, sometimes the fives go, sometimes they stay one-on-one. Each of those guys are reading the defense pretty well. Q. P.J., they shot a better percentage than you guys. They beat you on the total rebounding. They had 10 more turnovers. What was the importance of taking care of the basketball tonight? P.J. THOMPSON: Yeah, it's always an emphasis with us. Coach Painter really stresses that. We had 16 assists to four turnovers. That's pretty awesome, pretty big deal. That could have been the difference. We didn't shoot great. Dakota shot pretty well, but other than that we didn't shoot that great. Huerter got going a little bit, kind of made some plays. I think taking care of the ball really helped us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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