Jan. 24, 2010

Recap |  Box Score |  Notes

UW head coach Bo Ryan
On the win: “I was going to say ‘don’t ask me what happened’ again, but I thought I should come up with something different. I couldn’t come up with anything different. We have tough young men that will just go toe to toe with you for 40 and go another five if you have to. It’s just the young men that we have that can make something like that happen when it seems like everything is going the other way.

On Penn State’s shooting: “Shots for them went up in the air, hit the rim, hit the rim and went in. We’ve had a few of those at times the streak of threes. But that’s the best Talor Battle shot against us. I just figured he was saving it up for one game, he shot pretty well. He never changed expression; he never got down on himself, same thing before with Trevon Hughes.”

On Wisconsin’s offense: “You just have to keep searching. You just have to understand that sometimes things aren’t going to fit. You know, as a kid that when you get that board that has triangles, circles and squares, I was the type that if it didn’t fit, I made it fit. I pounded it until it broke to pieces and fit. Our guys are not like that. They do not get frustrated, they don’t pound that hammer and make a square go into a round hole. They just stayed within themselves. We needed to attack the lanes a little better, attack the block; we needed to attack certain angles, draw and dish. When people take away one thing you have to find another, and we did.”

On the key to winning:  “It’s about understanding that each possession has a value. If you are not winning one battle, maybe in another battle you do. In our minds we don’t go, ‘Oh we are terrible, this that and the other thing.’ There are a lot of different things you can do in the game of basketball that if you do well will always give you a chance. But there are things in the stats that if you don’t do well, it doesn’t mean you can’t win the game. Our guys understand that pretty well.”

 

UW Player Quotes

Jordan Taylor
On his performance over the final two minutes of regulation:
“I finally got one to go down. I hadn’t hit a shot in three halves, so I figured one had to go down eventually. Then one went down and I kept shooting and, fortunately, I started to get hot a little bit.”

On his overtime drive:
“That’s the difference between this year’s team and last year’s team, to an extent. Last year against Purdue, I know (Robbie) Hummel hit a big shot and we were on clips, like three of us, with our heads down. And this year I think we kept battling. On the drive, I knew we were down two and I was just trying to make a play and get in the lane. I was trying to make a play and, if they collapsed on me, then find an open guy. So I was just trying to make something happen.”

Jason Bohannon
On how the team came back from such a large deficit:
“We knew shots would fall. It didn’t look like it at times, but there were stretches where we got hot, and Jordan started to lead us towards the end of the game and that really propelled us to the victory. For us, it was a matter of rebounds. We still got beat up on the boards but we still found a way to grind it out and get a victory.”

On the Badgers’ recent slow starts:
“We struggled, but we got good looks. It’s not a matter of getting good looks. We should get the ball in the paint a little more through penetration, but we’ve been getting good looks. Maybe we’re forcing too many 3s, but the majority of those are good shots, we just haven’t been hitting them. It’s just a matter of us hitting them. We just have to keep grinding it out and doing whatever we need to do to get a victory.”

Keaton Nankivil
On his performance:
“After the way our team shot as a whole the last game, you figure there’s nowhere to really go but up. We went in with a little more confidence this game. I just happened to get the open looks early and most of that had to do with Pop [Trevon Hughes], Jordan and everybody getting to the paint and kicking it out more than anything.”

Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis
Opening comments: "We made some foolish turnovers down the stretch which really, really hurt us. Give Wisconsin credit, they made plays down the stretch when they needed to. Jordan Taylor got it going there the last couple minutes and made a big basket to tie the game. That's kind of been the story of our season. We've been one play away from winning several of these games. We just haven't made that one play, whether it's a rebound, whether it's a defensive stop or one more basket or eliminating one mistake. That was the game. It's all about a possession here and there."

On how tough was the loss and what he tells his players: "You got to make a play. We're up playing pretty well and then we let them get going. It's like the last seven minutes we didn't play very smart and you got to play smarter. You got to put a team away like this. Wisconsin is very good. I mean we out-rebounded them, we shoot pretty well, just like the other night against Michigan, and we walk out of here a loss. You have got to play all the way through. You can't ever just relax because they are unbelievable at making plays at the end of shot clocks and unbelievable at making plays at the end of the game. What do I tell our guys? I mean we got to go make that play. I've been telling them for seven or eight games now, you got to make that play. Somebody is going to make it for us and, like our football coach says, `You're never as good as you think you are, you're never as bad as you think you are.'" I don't think we're bad, I just think we haven't been able to... you guys are all laughing, the guy hasn't won a game in the league and he thinks he isn't bad. I don't think we're bad, I just think we've been snake-bitten constantly."

On Penn State's defense: "Well, we tried to change rhythms. I think that's the thing we wanted to do tonight was change rhythms and not let them get comfortable offensively. I thought switching back from man and zone never let them really get into a great rhythm defensively and we thought that was going to be important for us to try to not let them get as comfortable."

On what Wisconsin was doing to break the defense down late in the game: "They were taking us off the dribble late, driving, kicking and playing and we didn't contain the ball. It was the first key we talked about in the game, to contain the basketball. We can't let 3 (Trevon Hughes) and 11 (Jordan Taylor) penetrate and find 12 (Jason Bohannon). Again, in the last seven minutes we didn't end up playing the way we wanted to play. The first 35 minutes we did kind of what we wanted to do and the last five we just didn't do it."

 

Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis
Opening comments: “We made some foolish turnovers down the stretch which really, really hurt us.  Give Wisconsin credit, they made plays down the stretch when they needed to. Jordan Taylor got it going there the last couple minutes and made a big basket to tie the game. That’s kind of been the story of our season. We’ve been one play away from winning several of these games. We just haven’t made that one play, whether it’s a rebound, whether it’s a defensive stop or one more basket or eliminating one mistake. That was the game. It’s all about a possession here and there.”

On how tough was the loss and what he tells his players: “You got to make a play. We’re up playing pretty well and then we let them get going. It’s like the last seven minutes we didn’t play very smart and you got to play smarter. You got to put a team away like this. Wisconsin is very good. I mean we out-rebounded them, we shoot pretty well, just like the other night against Michigan, and we walk out of here a loss. You have got to play all the way through. You can’t ever just relax because they are unbelievable at making plays at the end of shot clocks and unbelievable at making plays at the end of the game. What do I tell our guys? I mean we got to go make that play. I’ve been telling them for seven or eight games now, you got to make that play. Somebody is going to make it for us and, like our football coach says, ‘You’re never as good as you think you are, you’re never as bad as you think you are.’” I don’t think we’re bad, I just think we haven’t been able to… you guys are all laughing, the guy hasn’t won a game in the league and he thinks he isn’t bad. I don’t think we’re bad, I just think we’ve been snake-bitten constantly.”

On Penn State’s defense: “Well, we tried to change rhythms. I think that’s the thing we wanted to do tonight was change rhythms and not let them get comfortable offensively. I thought switching back from man and zone never let them really get into a great rhythm defensively and we thought that was going to be important for us to try to not let them get as comfortable.”

On what Wisconsin was doing to break the defense down late in the game: “They were taking us off the dribble late, driving, kicking and playing and we didn’t contain the ball. It was the first key we talked about in the game, to contain the basketball. We can’t let 3 (Trevon Hughes) and 11 (Jordan Taylor) penetrate and find 12 (Jason Bohannon). Again, in the last seven minutes we didn’t end up playing the way we wanted to play. The first 35 minutes we did kind of what we wanted to do and the last five we just didn’t do it.”

On whether the Penn State players relaxed: “Yeah, I thought they relaxed and then (Wisconsin) came down and banged a shot right on us, I think it was a big 3. And then we come down and we try to score a little too early, and make a play and the kid walks. I’ve never been around a group of guys that play hard, play pretty well for long periods of time and we just make a big mistake at a crucial time. We’ve done that all year and that’s just very, very unfortunate.”

On matching up against Wisconsin: “We played more zone, 2-3 zone tonight. We tried to match up somewhat out of it and give them some different looks. We haven’t played much zone, but we thought we need to change, like I mentioned earlier, change tempo. They are a very good rhythm team and we tried to change the rhythm of the game. Whether it worked or not I don’t know, we still came out of here (with) a loss, so they made a play when they needed to.”