University of Minnesota Athletics
Minn-Illinois Post-Game Notes and Quotes
1/17/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Illinois 64, Minnesota 52
Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007 • Williams Arena
Game Notes
Attendance: 11,020
• Jim Molinari moves his record to 5-6 at Minnesota and 1-3 in Big Ten play. Molinari is 223-173 in his career.
• Illinois holds a 109-60 all-time lead in the series. Minnesota leads the series played in Minneapolis 43-39. Dating back to 1999, Illinois has won the last 16 meetings, the last seven in Williams Arena. The last Gopher win in the series came on Feb. 3, 1999, 75-63, in Minneapolis.
• Lawrence McKenzie has made a three-point field goal in 26 straight games dating back to his final eight games at Oklahoma in the 2004-05 season. McKenzie has made a three-pointer in all 18 games as a Golden Gopher.
• McKenzie scored in double figures for the 14th time this season and for the 42nd time in his career.
• Dan Coleman scored in double figures for the 15th time this season and the 36th time in his career. Coleman has scored in double figures for Minnesota in all four Big Ten contests this year.
• Jonathan Williams tied a career-high with five blocks on the night. It was the fourth time this season he registered a multiple block game.
• Williams played a season-high 28 minutes.
• Minnesota had nine blocks as a team. It was the fifth time this season that the Golden Gophers had nine or more blocks in a game. It was the first time since the Dec. 12 game against Central Florida that Minnesota registered nine or more blocks in a game.
• It was the most blocks by the Golden Gophers in a Big Ten game since Feb. 25, 2004 when they had 10 against Ohio State at Williams Arena.
• Bryce Webster tied a career-high with two blocks. Webster also had two blocks in his first career game at Minnesota against North Dakota State on Nov. 13.
• Minnesota had its best free-throw shooting night of the conference season, going 15-for-19 for a 78.9 percentage.
Minnesota-Illinois Quotes
Minnesota Head Coach Jim Molinari
(On Illinois’ quick start)
“I think Illinois does this to everyone. They come out and do a great job of setting a hard-paced offense. I give them credit, they set the pace, they made shots and we did not play to our identity. If we don’t guard we have no chance of winning. I give them credit for setting the tone in the first half.”
(On Illinois’ transition game)
“We went big for a while, because we were getting pounded on the boards. We tried to play Dan (Coleman) at the three, but then they hurt us in transition by hitting their three-point shots. We had some turnovers again in the first half. It is disappointing, because we especially need to try to take care of the ball at home, and we need to play better then that. I know the Illinois program well, I am from Illinois and that was an NCAA game for them. They are not going to want to start out 1-4 in the league. I guarantee they will give Wisconsin a tough game on Saturday.”
(On Brandon Smith)
“I think we were overmatched athletically, and Brandon (Smith) has done everything well since he has come back. I think he was aggressive, but I think we need to work on rebounding because Randle killed whoever we put on him.”
(On Spencer’s injury)
“I thought it was a real hard match up our inside players tonight, because Warren Carter is so mobile. Situations like tonight is where Spencer’s injury really hurts us. In the Purdue game, we were able to dump it into him for a lift. Tonight they pushed us way out and then we threw it inside and struggled to score. Not having Spencer limits our scoring options, that’s why I thought we need really needed to defend very well tonight.”
Minnesota Players
Junior guard Lawrence McKenzie
On the team’s losing streak to Illinois:
“That’s definitely difficult and frustrating. Illinois has been able to come in here and beat Minnesota for the last couple years. When you think about it, you want to win so bad, and it hurts that it turned out like this.”
On Illiniois’ frontcourt play:
“I think they did a good job of crashing the boards. But that’s on us too. We have to box out, we have to rebound. They got a lot of second shots, and they hit a lot of open shots. We can’t let teams get comfortable right away.”
On Illinois’ early run:
“I think that that run that they made at the beginning of the game really hurt us. We made some runs later in the game, but it wasn’t good enough. That run put us in a big hole. “
On the play of Brandon Smith:
“Brandon definitely brought a spark. He’s been playing like that the last couple of practices. As soon as he came back, I knew that if he got on the floor that he would do that. He’s a guy I’ve been playing with for a long time and I knew he would come out and play with a lot of energy and a lot of heart.”
Sophomore center Jon Williams
On Illinois’ quick start:
“The first half really killed us. We didn’t start off with the energy that we should have. Illinois is a tempo team, and they can jump on you really quick. So if we don’t respond to their tempo, it’s going to be really hard to fight your way back in the game.”
On the team attitude in the second half:
“We only let them score 26 points in the second half, so we did keep fighting. No one on our team is going to stop fighting. But overall, everybody on the team has some things we need to learn. Tomorrow we are going to get better in practice and put this behind us. “
On Illinois’ post play:
“I played with a couple of them this summer. They’re a good team. I don’t look at them different than I look at (Michigan’s) Courtney Sims or anybody else we go against. I just try to go in and play tough defense.”
Illinois Head Coach Bruce Weber
On getting a win on the road:
“We had a learning situation on Sunday and to be honest, the kids went into halftime in that game thinking they were going to win. A lot of them haven’t been there before and I don’t think we have the leadership to make the other guys understand you have to play 40 minutes. We didn’t do that on Sunday, but I think the kids were much more controlled today. We were able to make enough plays tonight to maintain the lead. It was a big confidence builder.
“I told them it was going to be a grind-out game. Even at halftime I told them they were going to have to find a way to win. It doesn’t matter how pretty you do it, you just have to have more points than them and then build off of that.”
On overcoming a 1-3 start to the Big Ten season:
“There are a lot of ifs. A lot of people are going to lose at Michigan and Michigan State. It’s just that we had them early and then had Ohio State in the middle. The schedule hasn’t been totally in our favor, but we had a chance to win all of those games and we didn’t do it. Now maybe we’ll grow up as a team and start figuring some things out.”
On being able to get some transition baskets:
“It was important in the first half. Our defense did a great job getting some deflections. We were able to get a couple of threes in transition and get a couple of layups. It just makes it easier on your offense, so that was a positive.”
