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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 16, 2013Jared BerggrenMike BruesewitzRyan EvansBo RyanCHICAGO, ILLINOIS WISCONSIN – 68 COACH RYAN: I just again can't tell you how proud I am of the defensive effort on a very good offensive team. So every guy that went in there, was pretty much sticking to the rules and trying to force Indiana to make some tough shots. I thought our guys accomplished that, and then we had streaks where we were hitting them. Fortunately made enough free throws at the end to keep that separation. Again, it's nice to be able to play in a championship game. I know our guys are looking forward to that, so are we, and we'll see what happens here in the next game. Q. Ryan, you were struggling to the point at the free throw line where you were starting to take jumpshots. How did you keep looking forward and not allow that to affect your confidence and your overall game? RYAN EVANS: This man here. He gave me the courage to go up here and try something new. I think it's been effective to this point. I'm no longer shooting 40 percent. So I mean, it's a good thing right now, and I'm going to stick with it for now. Q. Mike and Jared, first, can you talk about Jared's overall play, especially on the defensive end? And then Jared, you had not even looked to shoot a three‑pointer until the one that you had open from the wing; what made you take that one at that juncture? MIKE BRUESEWITZ: Worked extremely hard, everybody talks about Cody Zeller and he's a great player, he really is. He puts up numbers and there's a reason he'll probably be a lottery pick. But Berg (ph) did a great job, he set the tone early, knocked a couple balls away. Forced him into some tougher shots early, and just kind of made life miserable for him. And when he knocked down that three, he shot it and I knew it was cash. I was excited when he shot it, because I was like, he needs to start knocking these down because he's been doing that for the last three or four years, just finally come to fruition. JARED BERGGREN: You think I wasn't looking? I was looking, just biding my time. Just picking my spots. I mean, you know, it was open a couple times, my teammates told me, keep looking for it. Coach told me be aggressive, knock that down. I was just waiting for a good one, a great shot, not a good shot. You know, teammates caught me wide open and finally knocked them down. Felt good. Q. Ryan, what's the key to you guys being able to slow Indiana down? RYAN EVANS: Defense. I mean, I think we played great defense. You know, that forces them to take better shots, or if they want to go and take bad shots and play fast, that's on them. But I think it's the defense, defensive side of the ball. Q. Mike, there was a sequence in the game, I think Sam had the seven‑point run, but a sequence when you guys were beating them down the court and beating them on the fast break. What do you think people watching the game, watching you beat them in transition were thinking? MIKE BRUESEWITZ: Hey, those boys are athletic. (Laughter) That's all I got for ya. (Laughter)? Q. Ryan, can you just talk about your overall day and how effective you were and how important you felt like that had to be for this team to get going early for you to be successful? RYAN EVANS: I was just trying to start off inside, guys finding me. Trae making sure I get the ball. Then, you know, really feeding off of kicking it out and guys like Mike and Sam coming in and hitting threes, and that's a lot that we don't talk about is guys like Frank and Sam coming in and stepping up, how big that is for us, guys off the bench. That's needed if you want to win a championship in any tournament. Q. Ryan, you blocked Oladipo's shot three times today. How hard is it to stay in front and play defense on a guy as quick and athletic as he is? RYAN EVANS: He's a great player. Reminds me a lot of Russell Westbrook. I just have a lot of respect for him. I've seen him work his way up, up the ranks. They really start at the bottom as a team, and him as an individual, and he's really worked his way up. I was just trying to stay in front of him the best I can, and you know, I was able to do that this game, not always, but this game I was successful at that. Q. Mike, give you another hanging curve over the plate. Indiana is considered a team that can win a National Championship. You've beaten them twice. What do you think it says about this team‑‑ MIKE BRUESEWITZ: Just means we have a bunch of guys that want to play and play hard. Kind of how college basketball has gone this whole year. I think we have had numerous times a change in No.1, and I think it's going to make for a great NCAA Tournament, because I don't think a whole lot of 1‑seeds are going to be making the Final Four. If they do, it's great, but it's a wide open thing and anybody can beat anybody on any night. We have to make sure we bring our AGame otherwise we might be one of those teams. Q. Jared and Mike, could you talk about the energy Ryan provided on the offensive end tonight and how important that was to staying in pace with Indiana throughout the game? JARED BERGGREN: Yeah, he was huge for us. We were getting him a lot of touches inside and kind of running our offense through him a little bit. Same thing yesterday, too. Yesterday he had a lot of big plays where he was either scoring or finding teammates. He had a lot of assists. Again with four assists today, that's doing a good job of finding teammates and helping make plays for others, so it was a good job by him. MIKE BRUESEWITZ: Ryan, yeah, he just stepped up, he's been making plays and when he does that we are a much better team. And same thing with everybody, Sam, Trey has been playing better‑‑ we are playing our best basketball at the end of the season and that's what you want to do. Q. Mike, that prediction that there won't be a lot of 1‑seeds, are you a practice bracketologist? Is that based on intensive study? MIKE BRUESEWITZ: I'll let you guys decide all that. I was just giving y'all a quote. (Laughter). Q. Jared, do you have more confidence coming into this game knowing that you have this streak of 11 in a row? JARED BERGGREN: We don't really think about that. We just take it one game at a time. We wanted to come down here to try to win a championship. Indiana happened to be the next game, so we just take it one game at a time. But I mean, you know, we knew that we were capable of having success against this team; if we stuck to our rules and played our style of basketball, we are were able to do that today to come up with a win. Q. How has Ryan been able to continue to play with confidence? COACH RYAN: Well, it was A, B Or C. A was the jumpshot, Hal Greer‑style. Hal Greer had a little jump. It wasn't quite as accentuated, for the older people in the room, as Ryan's is. Ryan's is his game jumpshot. Hal had a little jumper, mini‑jumper. B was Globetrotter, kick the ball in. Drop kick, you drop it down, you kick it up. And third was underhand. So it was A, B Or C. Ryan chose A. He's okay with it. His numbers are up. Q. Can you talk about Frank's contribution, particularly in the first half? COACH RYAN: Well, on the glass, I thought he did a pretty good job. Zeller is a very good player. I'm glad we had two bigs to be able to operate in there.  I was glad we had two bigs yesterday. I'm sure we'll be glad‑‑ we'll need six tomorrow, no matter who we're playing. But he stayed within himself. He didn't try to do things that he couldn't. Good ball fakes. Took care of the ball. Got on the glass. Played D. That's all we ask for. And if you can hit some shots while you're doing all that, that's a bonus. Q. Just going back maybe to yesterday real quick, you guys came in at halftime yesterday‑‑ hitting shots, but I still got the impression Michigan was in a load of trouble. There was a lot of offense in this game and still got the same feeling that Indiana was in trouble. Help me get my head around your team. Why is it you are able to neutralize whatever they have been doing, the way you've been, regardless of your offensive putout? COACH RYAN: Okay, but I'm not sure what you're referring to‑‑ Q. I still got the impression you were in the flow regardless if you had points on the board or not‑‑ the contrast between the two days. COACH RYAN: It's still points per possession, and sometimes teams will shoot a little quicker and sometimes we'll shoot a little quicker if we have an open look. So much is made about pace and everything else, you know, I never heard one fan at the Palestra when Penn would hold the ball on Villanova in the 50s tees and 60s, there's no shot clock, there's no anything, I saw a lot of pass and cut, pass and cut‑‑ I'm sure if you get some footage on that, send it to me, because I don't have any; pass and cut, move. And if a shot opened up right away, you take the shot. If it doesn't, you work for the next one. So the game wasn't any different here today than any team I've coached. You take advantage of what you can. You try to take good opportunities every trip down. You try to limit another team's good opportunities, and it's that constant clash. And the game never changes. And my guys understand that. I've never out‑coached anyone. I've never out‑maneuvered anyone, out‑strategized anyone. I've got to be careful going much further, Barry is here, but I get to coach and work with these guys and teach, and with the assistants. You know, as long as they keep listening, keep working, we'll keep doing the things that we do, just try to do them better all the time. There aren't any secrets. Q. Could you talk about Mike's play, he's kind of a thorn in the side of India narcotics the stat line does not pop off the page, often doesn't for him but he made all the hustle plays. What did you think when he made that steal, to me that kind of sealed it for your team. COACH RYAN: He's 'Johnny On the Spot.' He's a guy that's always opportunistic. He is so happy to be playing this year after what happened earlier. You give somebody a second lease on his basketball life, so to speak, and he's not going to waste a minute of it. It's not like he doesn't play like that before last year, but he's just a guy, high energy, and he's going to try to make good things happen without going outside of himself and hurting his teammates behind him defensively or offensively. Q. I don't know if you heard but Northwestern announced today that Bill Carmody is not going to come back. Your thoughts on that? COACH RYAN: Well, first of all, I know administrators have a profession, the university officials have a profession, and coaches have a profession. So whatever decisions are made in that profession, I'm not going to get into. I can tell you this: Bill has not forgotten anything about the game. He knows the game. His system is so tough to prepare for, and, you know, he did a lot of good things. I know he's very well respected in the coaching field and I know he's a guy that has done our profession a lot of good and he's made us proud. All I can say is I wish Bill the best of luck because I have a hell of a lot of respect for him. Whatever decisions are made are made by other people, but you won't find a coach that won't tell you that they respect Bill Carmody‑‑ that they don't respect; they all do, top to bottom. Q. What is it about your team that makes it so tough for opponents like Indiana to beat you seems like it's been a consistent thing, especially when you get to the tournament. COACH RYAN: When we scored those‑‑ we had 10‑points with about, what, two minutes to go yesterday; I don't think anybody was preparing that kind of a question. You see what I'm getting at. There are just things in this game where no matter how you try to explain them, they defy explanation or reason. And other things are because the coach is so obstinate he's only going to accept certain things. So maybe it's a combination of that. And you have players that are willing to listen, willing to work and willing to buy in. So there are guys that know a lot more in this profession than I do that have their teams go out there sometimes and look like they have never played together before. We have had moments where we looked like we never played together. You just have to play the percentages, you've got to keep driving, you've got to keep working it, and when you're surrounded with good people, it sure makes it a lot easier. It's never easy, just makes it easier. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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