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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2015Sam DekkerDuje DukanFrank KaminskyBo RyanCHICAGO, ILLINOIS Wisconsin – 71 COACH RYAN: My opening statement is we're ready for questions. Q. Frank, I know you've played here many times, but what does it mean to you to be a Chicagoland player and have family, friends, and have this tournament your senior year in the Chicagoland area? FRANK KAMINSKY: It's awesome being able to come home and play in front of so many friends and family. Duje and I are from this area and we have ties to this arena. It's always awesome when you have a chance to play someplace like this. Q. Frank, you had that unusual stretch where you missed a shot and a couple turnovers. Talk about that a little bit if you could, and just going to the bench. Was Coach Ryan punishing you or just giving you a little break? FRANK KAMINSKY: It was obviously a frustrating stretch. They took the lead back and I just had to recuperate mentally and go back out on the court and bring some energy. Q. Sam and Duje, can you address what got into you in the first half when you got a little active? I think it started with a tip or play inside, and then Duje, the same for you, it seemed in the second half it was your first to kind of spark the team. SAM DEKKER: What we ‑‑ kind of were lacking energy a little bit in the first half. We were playing harder than us, so some guys made some plays for us, stepped up, brought the energy level of us up, and saw some opportunities to attack and got some buckets going. Just tried to make it hard on them defensively. It's something I've been working on, and I thought I did a better job tonight. DUJE DUKAN: In the second half, Coach always preaches for the guys coming off the bench to bring energy and contribute in any way possible. You know, the opportunity presented itself where I got a wide open three to start it off, hit that, and kind of carried my confidence throughout, and then just played my game and tried to help us as much as we could to get this win. Q. Duje, you struggled a lot with your shot from January on into March and then hit the one at Wisconsin and lost your confidence a little bit. Do you have an idea of what was going wrong during that slump and why it's more accurate now? DUJE DUKAN: Just missing shots. There's really no explanation for it. Coming off the bench, obviously, there's going to be games where I might not shoot the ball as well, so I just try to contribute in other ways. But yeah, I think I've found it now and hopefully it's here to stay. Q. Sam, what type of challenge is it when a team you're playing against is really playing like they have nothing to lose? Do you have to match that? SAM DEKKER: Yeah. You know, like I said, they had a lot of energy from the start. It's not like they didn't have nothing to play for. They wanted to win a few games here and win a Big Ten Tournament championship. I think that should be the goal of everyone. They came out firing, and they were throwing punches early, and they were doing a better job at that than us. So we just had to counter that, and just try to withstand it and get a little run ourselves, and I thought we did a pretty good job of getting a few runs, extending the lead a little bit and then just holding them off. Q. Duje, you had that drive and slam, looked like maybe you were close to getting a T. You were hanging on the rim a bit. Were you worried about that? DUJE DUKAN: Not really. I just thought it was a good play to get the guys going a little bit, kind of a momentum swing. I didn't really worry about it. It would have been a bad way to end it. Q. Frank talked about it a little bit, but obviously you have connections to this arena, as well, and what does it mean to have a big game here? DUJE DUKAN: It's huge. Growing up as a kid, I came to games, I worked here as a ball boy, shot around before games. It's always been a dream of mine to play in an arena like especially this one, so to be able to come here and have a good performance, it's definitely very, very encouraging. Q. Coach, Irvin had 21, but a lot of the shots he hit were contested. How do you think you defended him? COACH RYAN: I thought we made him work pretty hard. You know, sometimes a person answers the challenge and hits some of his own. You know, sometimes you look at number of points on number of shots, and seeing as he didn't get any from the free‑throw line, then his numbers are pretty good. To get 21 points on 18 shots and not have any free throws‑‑ so he had a good game. He earned it. He earned every point‑‑ we tried to make him earn every bucket he had. Q. What do you take from this game other than a victory? COACH RYAN: Well, by the way, there was a guy underneath Duje when he first dunked and then swung back, there was a Michigan player right there. He wasn't going to get a T on that one because he wasn't able to come straight down. You remember those days. What do we take from this you ask? We get to play another 40 minutes down here in Chicago in a great venue, and your supporters that bought the tickets, they get to be here another‑‑ that's pretty exciting. I brought a James Patterson novel hoping to stay here a few days. I did. Q. One of the key plays was when Frank was prone on the floor and kept the rebound alive and Dekker ended up scoring to conclude the possession. Is that just an indication of what kind of basketball instincts he has and the intangibles he brings to the team that can't be necessarily judged by pure numbers? COACH RYAN: He's just an all‑around player. He's a gamer. He understands every little thing in a game ends up being something on this sheet or leads to something on this sheet. You never have to explain too much to him. He just had a couple rough spots there. Once he collected himself and got‑‑ hey, he was ready to go. Some guys pout. He didn't pout. He went back out there and played. Q. Is this team playing better than it was at this time last year, and if so, in what ways? COACH RYAN: Well, I don't know. Sometimes you would hope that experience can help you. We ran into a buzz saw in the Big Ten Tournament last year, Michigan State got healthy and they had everybody. They were ready to go. So now we'll see who we play next. We got bumped in the semis, now we'd like to get something done in the semis because it's next. I don't compare. I don't like to compare and contrast. I just want to give these guys their shot, their chance, and it's up to them to take advantage of it. Q. I know you want to win the championship to win the championship, but does any part of your motivation coincide with trying to get the highest NCAA Tournament seed possible? COACH RYAN: It hasn't been mentioned once, in the locker room, in any conversations with the players, with the coaches. I've always figured that if you just take care of business that people in the know will know what to do with your team. That's all we can do. We can control our destiny simply by playing well on every possession, and if that's good enough, then so be it. If it's not, then we just‑‑ all we know is we're going to be playing in the NCAA Tournament, and the rest is wait and see. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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