University of Minnesota Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Northwestern
1/23/2018 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Recap | Notes | Photo Gallery 1 | Photo Gallery 2
Minnesota Head Coach Richard Pitino
Opening statement:
"Well that was obviously a tough one. I thought we really fought. We're obviously undermanned and we got tired and we wore down. Amir and Dupree showed great heart to fight through it. I kept asking 'Do you want me to take you out? Do you want me to take you out?' and they said 'I'm good.' We wore down. I thought we really scrapped and fought, but just give them credit, they made shots when they needed to and we couldn't."
On McBrayer's injury:
"I think he got kind of banged where that stress reaction was, but he tried to get it out."
On adversity:
"You can't get frustrated with the refs. We can only control what we can control. We try to move on. Go get stops, don't let it affect you. We can only do so much. We can only control what we can control."
On performance of a "smaller" lineup:
"I thought it was good but we needed to get a few stops and rebounds and we didn't get them. Down low, I thought Pardon made a big play. That's kind of the hand we're dealt right now, but I did like a little bit of it. I think as we move forward from an offensive side of it, we can keep going. We can build from it."
On team's effort:
"They're all giving everything. We just gotta be smarter when it's time to be smarter. We've got to be able to rely when we're tired to go get that stop and I just thought we wore down that second half. It's hard when you're down two guys. Two other guys can't really practice. So you want rest, but you want to get better. You want to retool because I think you have to do that. So it is challenging to say the least."
Northwestern Head Coach Chris Collins
Opening statement:
"It was a huge game for us, everyone knows the struggles we've had throughout the year to find ourselves as a team. We feel like in the last two weeks we're starting to play good basketball, and this was a big game, the halfway point of the league. I think a game like tonight it keeps us in the mix. That's why we had a high level of urgency."
On Gophers three point shooting:
"We didnt want to overrreact. They made shots early we wanted to stick tight with our principles early and make sure we were protecting the paint, and sooner or later, those shots weren't going in as much."
On the veteran presence on Northwestern:
"There's a lot of veterans in our locker room, there's a senior class that this means something to them. They've been a part of the growth of our program and the build over these last four years, and they want to finish it right. We can't look back now and say what we could have or should have done during the early part of the season. The only thing we can do now is control what we do the rest of the way. The resiliency of your group, the urgency, the way we've approached everything, Im really pleased with where our team is at right now."
Junior Guard Dupree McBrayer
On his first half injury and gutting it out the rest of the game…
"You know, growing up with my mom, she always told me to be tough. So even though I'm hurting, I still try to go out there and help any way I can."
On if he thinks with a smaller bench Minnesota has been getting worn down in second halves of games…
"I mean yeah, but that's still not an excuse. We have to be mentally prepared and physically prepared to just gut it out. This is the Big Ten, it's not easy, so we just have to be ready to gut it out."
On Nate Mason's game tonight…
"He played terrific, especially being down. He's a great player, and he's leading us the best way he can."
On the pros and cons of running a smaller lineup…
"It hurts with defensive rebounding because we're real small on the inside, but offensively it gives us more threats out there. We just have to work on defensive rebounding out there because we're so much smaller than other people."
