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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2017Mark TurgeonKevin HuerterMelo TrimbleWashington, D.C. Northwestern - 72, Maryland - 64 THE MODERATOR: We'll ask Coach Turgeon to make an opening statement. COACH TURGEON: Real quick. I thought Northwestern was the better team. I thought they were tougher than we were. Really disappointed in the way we finished the game. What a great crowd, crowd was amazing. We just didn't play with the toughness we needed to play with. We didn't play very smart. They were good. Give them credit. We missed a lot of free throws during a stretch. We couldn't score for a long period of time. We just weren't tough enough to run our offense against them tonight. Happy for Chris. Doing a great job with his program. THE MODERATOR: Questions to Kevin and Melo. Q. Kevin, you played this team at their place a few weeks ago and had a rough shooting night. Tonight 19 points. Was it just a bad night a few weeks ago? How have you developed offensively as a player? KEVIN HUERTER: I think it was a bad night last time we played at their place. For us, I mean, he got hot when we were there. When a guy gets hot, we definitely try to give him the ball more. I just put it to a bad game. Tried to be more aggressive in this game. Q. Melo, you played against these guys a couple weeks ago. You scored 30 points. What did they do tonight against you to cut down the scoring? MELO TRIMBLE: I mean, they just took us out of our offense. We wasn't able to execute the way we executed at Northwestern. They played in the gap. Everyone collapsed whenever I went to the basket. They just tried to put a lot of hands up, tried to take charges, tried to find a way to affect me. Q. Vic Law, what did he do tonight that you weren't able to stop a few weeks ago? MELO TRIMBLE: He just hit shots. We wasn't able to keep him out of the paint. He was able to do whatever he wanted. Like I said, he hit shots. Q. Now that this is over with, you do have the NCAA tournament to look forward to. What has to change for you heading into that? KEVIN HUERTER: We just have to try to forget about this game. Obviously take away what we didn't do very well, which is obviously we got out-toughed. We didn't execute offensively. But we got to try to get past it, move on, realize that there's still great things for us to do hopefully. Q. Is there any extra disappointment that you had a chance to play this tournament so close to home, you're out after the first game? MELO TRIMBLE: I mean, we had a good crowd there, obviously. I mean, that was the best that we've seen them all year. Unfortunately, like you said, we lost. But we have another week. It's the bigger tournament. So we're going to prepare for that all week. Have a lot of days. We're just going to start over, get back in the gym, just get back to it. THE MODERATOR: Thanks. You can return to the locker room. Take questions for coach. Q. Mark, what did Northwestern do to kind of take you out of the offensive flow? COACH TURGEON: They were just physical. They were sitting on a lot of things that we do. But we allowed them to do it. They pushed us out a little bit further than what we're accustomed to. We just weren't cutting hard enough, trying to score out of what we were doing. We were just kind of going through the motions a little bit. Stay on them to keep getting through it. I mean, just couldn't find any consistency with our offense. Of course, we had that big drought. That was really the game. Q. Northwestern had two different runs of, I think, 20-2, 20-4. Anything you can say to the players during that to keep their spirits up, help in the future prevent something like that from happening? COACH TURGEON: Yeah, I mean, this time of year, your defense has to be consistent and your offense has to be consistent. We had a lot of turnovers from our point guard position tonight. Then when we weren't going well offensively, we stopped guarding. Yeah, it was a game of runs. It was amazing. We started well, and then they were up eight or nine, and then we got the lead, went up ten, then they dominated from there. We just got to play better. We just got to play better. We got to handle the stage better and play better. Hopefully we have time to practice. Hopefully we'll get better between now and our next game. Q. What did Northwestern do that was different tonight than the last time you played them in Chicago? COACH TURGEON: Well, they had a pretty good player that didn't play, Lumpkin, played tonight, didn't play in Chicago. Had a lot more depth. He made a couple tough ones out there. Gives them more confidence. They had more confidence because of it. Vic Law played much better tonight than he played there. Their defense was much better. We were able to do whatever we wanted at their place. We couldn't do anything tonight. I think Lumpkin has a little bit to do with that. Gives them more length and athleticism on the perimeter. Then guys like Skelly, Skelly was a lot better tonight than he was there, too. They all played better, and we didn't play as well. Q. You're down. The front court is struggling with foul issues. How difficult is to keep changing the rotation over and over again? COACH TURGEON: We were in foul trouble tonight. We are who we are. We're better than we played. We're 24-8. We were picked 10th. I've loved coaching this team. Tonight we weren't tough enough. I told them starting Monday, the practice plan, whenever we practice, Sunday, practice is going to stay practice plan number one. We're starting a new season with a fresh attitude, see if we can play well in the NCAA tournament. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. COACH TURGEON: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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