Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan
On Jason Bohannon’s stat line, including three blocks: “I really never thought about that, but you know they were attacking the rim and they were trying to get to the free-throw line. They were doing the right things. This game’s obviously going to help both of us, and I think what Dane (Fife) saw with his guys when they were attacking was that they were pretty aggressive. Sometimes a player’s going to get caught in an offensive position where he’s got to try to get the shot off and Jason just happened to be in the right spot. And he played it well. He didn’t over-commit. So I don’t think he’s going to have three (blocks) for the rest of the year to be honest with you.”

On holding IPFW scoreless for seven-plus minutes: “Sometimes a team is just cold and they go through rough spots, like we all do. But I thought we handled the screens fairly well – good edge, good help, good use of what we call the fly trap. And we chased well. Other than the two 3s they hit at the very end, I thought we did a pretty good job on the outside shooting. They’ve got guys that can shoot. Dane was always a tough, feisty player, but he could always shoot pretty well. So his teams are like that. They came in here (in 2007) and hit quite a few 3s early. I thought, overall, we chased well and we handled the screens pretty well.”

On Jon Leuer’s game: “The only bad shots he took were the turn-around fadeaways because that’s not his strength. At times he’ll make a couple, but we always remind him in practice that he’s got a pretty good counter, a pretty good catch-and-reverse pivot. So other than a couple [that] he gave into an improper balance on – fadeaways – his shot selection was excellent he didn’t force anything. His teammates found him.”


UW Player Quotes
Trevon Hughes
On the multiple turnovers at the end of the game: “We were trying to make plans and things weren’t going our way at the time. They were silly mistakes that can be corrected. I guess you could label it a ‘lack of focus.’”

On what the team gained tonight: “When times get rough, don’t fold like we did last year in the last eight minutes. When times get tough we need to stay in the situation.”

Jason Bohannon
On the multiple turnovers at the end of the game: “We were trying to make some plays and they didn’t fall our way a couple of times, well more than a couple of times. They were simple plays and we can correct those. We can go into practice and watch the film and have it corrected the next day.”

On having three blocked shots: “It’s been a while. There were opportunities where I was trailing my guy a little bit and he put the ball above his head and I read it. It wasn’t anything extraordinary I was doing, I was just in the right place at the right time.”

Jon Leuer
On shot selection: “We knew we had the size advantage against these guys. The bigs took it upon ourselves to make a statement and post up hard. We have guards that can get us the ball so if we post up hard they’re going to get it to us and we’re going to finish inside.  One of the main things we focused on in the offseason was putting on weight, putting on strength and be able to finish inside like that.”

On IPFW's scoring drought: “We just took care of the ball. If we take care of the ball and every guy out there is unselfish and is willing to move the ball around there, we know we’re going to get good shots. As long as we’re making hard cuts and doing that offensively it will take care of itself. Defensively, we really stepped it up and were chasing well.  It just seemed we had a good flow both offensively and defensively.”

On preparation for Oakland: “We haven’t really gone over Oakland yet. Whoever the opponent is we’re going to stick to our system, stick to our rules and we know if we do that it’s going to give us a good chance to be successful.”


IPFW Head Coach Dane Fife
Opening Statement: “I have huge respect for Wisconsin. I thanked them at the end because they were trying to fine tune some things that they were working on at the end. The way they were going there, they could have scored 150 [points] on us. With that said, we were very much short-handed tonight, with three new post players. They didn’t look like post players though, against Wisconsin. Three new interior guys that I thought played hard tonight and at least tried to do what we’ve been working on. Wisconsin is just a formidable force, and they just continue to do great things. I thought it was a good experience for our men.”

On IPFW’s players battling illnesses: “Well we’ve got probably anywhere from three to four players coming off illnesses. You have to play with illness though, and we have to show up and do what we need to do to take care of business. We obviously did not do that tonight, regardless of the squad we had on the floor. And then we have our best player suspended, it makes it that much more difficult.”

On the length of the Wisconsin players: “Well obviously looking at our team, we don’t have much size, and we’re not used to going against those kinds of players. I think that’s great for us because, going into our conference, there are some pretty big players. We have to be smarter and try to draw the foul and try to beat them off the dribble rather than post them up and try to shoot around players like [Jon] Leuer and [Keaton] Nankivil. To answer your question, it drove us nuts all night.”

On Jon Leuer: “He did exactly what we expected tonight. Watching Leuer grow as a player has been impressive. It’s not a surprise though, it’s two-fold. He did what we expected, and we didn’t defend him the way we were supposed to. We were supposed to front the post and try not to let Leuer catch it, but as you saw, he could catch it any time he wanted in the post. I can chalk it up to a new guy out on the floor and not really understanding what it’s going to take to even compete with a team like Wisconsin. You have to execute your game plan, and we did not do that.”