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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2013Tim MilesShavon ShieldsBrandon UbelCHICAGO, ILLINOIS OHIO STATE – 71 COACH MILES: Congratulations to Ohio State. I thought we had a good start. Just couldn't get the clock to run fast enough to get out of that first half. But have to credit Ohio State. That defensive pressure made all the difference. Q. Brandon, was the turnover thing kind of puzzling? You know they play good defense but you guys have just not had those in clusters like that, was it confusing or puzzling? BRANDON UBEL: It was definitely something that that's kind of what the game came down to was us not handling the pressure well. You know, kind of being loose with the ball at times; it ended up costing us the game. Obviously it's frustrating when you're turning the ball over and they are turning that into buckets on the other end. We just weren't tight with our games, and you know, kind of let that pressure get to us a little bit. Q. Shavon, Ohio State in the second half only missed five shots from the floor. Is that one of those cases where they were just red shot, or was it a combination of you guys having some lapses on defense as well? SHAVON SHIELDS: I just think it was our turnovers, like Brandon said, our turnovers, they were getting wide open shots. Once you get on a roll, or once they get on a roll, they are hard to stop. So if we would have eliminated turnovers, I think we played them well in the halfcourt. But once they got in transition, that kind of killed us. Q. Brandon, maybe just reflect a little bit on the season and what you guys were able to accomplish. A lot of people didn't expect a whole lot; do you feel as you leave the program you set a really good foundation? BRANDON UBEL: I hope so. Our goal this season was to exceed other people's expectations. Obviously we expected more out of ourselves. We believed in ourselves in the locker room, but you know, we wanted to prove everybody else wrong. We did that I guess to a degree, but we definitely had higher aspirations than what we came out with. But I think as the season went on, we were playing better and better basketball. You know, everybody on the team came to practice every day and wanted to get better. I think you saw that as the season went on. Hopefully that will carry on to the next season and the next season, and guys like Shavon will kind of carry the torch and keep building on what we started. Q. Coach, Ohio State got those three free throws at the end right before the half. Did you feel like that could potentially be a turning point in the game, especially with how Ohio State came out to start the second half? COACH MILES: Yeah, we had Shavon with two fouls, so we didn't want to risk a third. So we put a young guy in there, and he went down and he traveled on one end and I think he was trying to make up for it on the other end and just have to let that play go, just have to have amnesia sometimes. That was a critical play; it hurt us. But at the same time, we kind of did it to ourselves to start the second half. Their ability to get in transition and hurt us off their defensive pressure was the key to the game. Q. When you look back at the entire season, is it safe to say your team exceeded expectations, your expectations? COACH MILES: I want what the seniors wanted. Those guys wanted to play in the postseason, and it's that simple. You know, we have to build our own tradition, our own expectation. If we sit here and say, oh, it's okay, we had a pretty good year, because everybody thought we maybe exceeded expectation, we are just digging our own grave. We don't live in that world. That's not our language. We are going to build our own future, our own tradition. And those guys wanted to play postseason, and like Brandon said, we fell short. Q. The fatigue factor, mentally or physically or both, was that evident in the second half? COACH MILES: I thought the Ohio State factor was a bigger factor than anything. Those guys are really quick. They can put a lot of pressure on you and make it difficult for you to play. I think that was the deal. Q. If you wouldn't mind, just talk about the year you got from Ray and his emergence, in a lot of ways, he became the Big Ten's 'Ironman.' COACH MILES: He did. I think he's ready for any triathlete in the world at this point in time. Ray, I just kept saying, take him out, but he never looks tired. I always found somebody else that looked a little tired. But Ray just competed as well as he could. He gave us everything that you could ask for. He's a great kid. He wants to do so well and just he'll miss two shots in a row and just breaks his heart. You see it in his eyes and his body language, and yet we are making him, you know, raw screen constantly, guard some of the best players in the Big Ten, and do it without any breaks and don't make any mistakes while you're at it, right. That's a lot to expect out of a young guy. Q. Can you just talk about the conference itself, the calibre of play, the style of play, the competitiveness. COACH MILES: Well, I just glanced at it, so don't hold me to the math, but it looked like today, if you didn't include the Huskers, the average win was about 24 wins out of these teams. That's pretty impressive stuff with seven of those teams‑‑ that's a lot of wins. You know, we were holding down the mean. But it's a phenomenal league. I think it's only getting better. I watched today, and I was just ‑‑ Sam Thompson. I think he's just developed and improved. He didn't look as good shooting the ball earlier in the year as he does now; every time he jumped up, it looked like it was going to go in. And when you look at that athleticism and that quickness and those things, and now you throw a great three‑point shooter on top of it, and if he can develop that consistently, and put up more volume; his numbers are solid, buy doesn't have a lot of them to go by, wow, what an element a guy like that has. And he's, you know, an elite player on that team in a way, so pretty amazing league. Q. You often hear this time of year coaches talk about how they can hardly wait until next season when their season comes to an end. As you sit up there tonight, is that your mind‑set, just going with the fact of what you saw here towards the end of the year? COACH MILES: I'm excited about our future, there's no doubt about it. I think we've got some talent on the way. But, you know, we've got a lot of work to do to replace the heart and soul of this group, and that's what we lost with Dylan Talley, Brandon Ubel, André Almeida mean, and we lost a lot of veteran leadership. So we are going to have to develop some of that. That's going to take some time, and it could come at a cost, I don't think there's any question about it. But I'm looking forward to improving our program and I think we have guys that are really invested. One neat thing I thought you saw in a lot of Husker home games this year is we had three guys red‑shirting at the end of the berth up cheering every play and up into the games and want to go support their teams and they gave us their best shot in practice too, and we needed that. There's some bright things but we are going to miss these guys, too. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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