Dec. 4, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Notes | AP Photo Gallery 
Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan
On Jordan Taylor’s selfless play:
“The reason why he came up short (of a triple-double) is because he had one turnover in the first half. If he would have taken care of the ball and made the right pass he would have had a triple-double, the first one in school history, but as a result of that one turnover. Somebody mentioned that Mike Bruesewitz missed that last jumper, but I didn’t want poor Mike to feel that it was him that cost him the triple-double. There were other opportunities that guys could have hit shots. But how about that performance?”
“If you watched South Dakota on film, you could have scripted this game yourself. This is how they play. They’re good. They shoot it well. They go on streaks and you have to handle the streaks. It was Jordan that was the difference maker.”
On Wisconsin’s 3-point shooting on Saturday:
“Sometimes when you fill the middle and jam things up, a lot of the three’s we took were a result of the ball touching the short corner, the baseline, or the post on kick-outs. Traditionally, that’s the highest percentage three you can get, when the ball goes to the post and then goes out. When those are there, you have to be able to hit them. We had one little dry patch, but other than that we were pretty consistent with three’s. When you have 36 points on 31 shots that’s good. Anytime you get more points than shot attempts from three, it’s okay.”
On how Rob Wilson can get more playing time:
“There are certain things we do, that we say, and when you don’t do it, you need to watch. It’s pretty simple. That’s for us to deal with. I have rules on defense. If guys aren’t playing as much against certain teams it might because, defensively, they don’t handle certain things real well. That’s what’s good about having the kind of team that we have, some guys can handle certain things better than others. I never worry about the individual. I worry about putting the team out there that is going to be the best. That group out there at the end was the best we have had up to this point, most consistent on screening situations, 3-point shooters, sticking to our rules. That group that closed out the game are the ones that have done the best job.”
“What about that in life? You do something the way it was supposed to be done and you get rewarded. I still think that’s a pretty good deal. If you want to get rewarded, everybody’s got to keep doing the right things. And I didn’t invent that, by the way. That’s the way I was brought up.”
On South Dakota’s play:
“It didn’t surprise me in the least. The pops, the stare you down pull it up, let it fly, yeah, not at all. Every single game, whether it was Wyoming, Illinois State, Marquette, you just have to keep working them so those don’t go down.”
On Wisconsin’s careless ball-handling in the first half:
“One-handed passes. There is a time for those. We haven’t been one of the best teams in the country in terms of taking care of the ball by accident. So again, you just follow the rules.”
Senior F Jon Leuer
On having the game scripted out about South Dakota
"We had to close out on shooters a litter better we know coming in how they could shoot. We knew they were going to come in firing. They have a lot of guys that can do that, and they obviously proved that they could do that here. It would have been better to close out, maybe play some screens differently, but they were pushing in transition, and coming down maybe 25 second left on the shot clock, firing up three's. As I said, they have guys that can hit that, that's their style of play and that's what you have to prepare for and defend against."
On UW's seven turnovers in the first half:
"I think the turnovers led to some of their three's, if we could have had fewer turnovers and finished around the basket we could have eliminated some of their open looks. We could have done some things differently, we did make some mistakes but like I said, they were able to knock down open shots. They would shot fake if you came at them hard, and slide by one dribble and shoot a three. Against teams like that, you need to keep pressuring them, keep trying to take away open looks. When they are willing to shoot those three's that early in the shot clock, and we keep turning the ball over, they will get into a rhythm as they did in the first half, although we did a lot better in the second half."
On how he has been shooting and making more 3-pointing than in the past:"I definitely worked on it during the off-season, tried to improve my shot and make it more consistent. I just take the looks the defense give me, and try to make the right reads. Jordan was finding me in some open spots. He penetrates the lane so well that a lot of the times defenses have to collapse on him. Mainly I'm just spotting up, getting my feet set, getting down and ready to shoot it, and I think that's the biggest difference.
Junior G Jordan Taylor
On Bo Ryan joking that Taylor cost himself a triple-double with his first half turn-over:
“I'll buy that; I probably missed Mike Bruesewitz under the basket one or two times too. I think I yelled at Mike for taking that shot so early in the shot clock when we're up, it's all in good fun."
On his mindset towards the end of the game:
"I was trying to be aggressive, and tried to create different opportunities for both myself and my teammates. Most of the game I think we were doing a really bad job at finishing. I know I missed quite a few layups around the rim, and if we would have made those it might have looked a little different. I was trying to attack and stay aggressive, trying to put them on their heels and create opportunities."
Sophomore F Mike Bruesewitz
On how South Dakota pushed the Badgers:
“They were a little bit different then that NC State team, they shot the ball quite a bit better. Its just a different challenge every week. It was good to have these guys come in here and run stuff that they do well. Obviously, they shot the ball extremely well, and got shots that they wanted. I think it's good that we have different styles of teams come in so as we get deeper into the tournament, and Big Ten, we can get ready to see stuff that we haven’t seen before.”
South Dakota Head Coach Dave Boots
Opening statement:
"It was a competitive game for the good part of it; I thought our guys competed well on that, but we know how good Wisconsin is, and their two really good players certainly stepped up in this game. They made the plays when they needed to. Our effort was good, we’re still learning a lot of things about it, but it’s a hard team to defend. They rebounded, they made no mistakes, they didn’t turn the ball over at all, they got a bunch of guys who can score. I thought Wisconsin looked really really good today. I’m certainly proud of our kids’ efforts, though."
"On the team’s strategy to attack Wisconsin:
“We don’t have a lot of big guys. We’ll normally just play one big guy at a time, and we start that way with our two big kids. But it was hard for us to defend that way, so we were running four guards out there that should be able to move and cut and attack the basket, and try to create some mismatches with that, and that was our offensive philosophy. A couple of our kids did a nice job with that today.
"And then we had to switch out one of our matchups, we only had two-three matchups in the first half, then late in the first half we went to our 1-3-1, we just broke it down a little bit that way, and tried to battle that way. So we changed up and stayed with that in the second half, and I thought we had some success with it. Again, we could not contain (Jordan) Taylor’s penetration, he got to the basket whenever he wanted to, and (Jon) Leuer is just a lights-out offensive player.”
On senior Jon Leuer’s defense:
“He’s got a lot of size. I thought our true freshman did a nice job in the second half. He turned and tried to attack the basket on that, but he (Leuer) is a huge kid. And he’s so skilled. There’s not many 6-11 kids that do what that kid can do so soon. Obviously he’s going to be playing in the league (NBA) a year from now. But they were good defensively. They don’t give a lot of things easily, what you get you have to earn. I’m sure they felt they were in control of that game, and they were. Jon Leuer is just a big, big-time player.”
On feeling confident going into halftime after hitting the shots the team needed:
“We talked to our kids (about it) too. This is our third year of transition into Division I, and we’re still learning an awful lot. That’s why we like playing in these environments because our kids are going to see first hand how talented kids are, how much bigger and stronger they might be than us so that we can get in those spring and summer workouts and work at that part of the game. I think they have some good, talented kids that play well together. They have good chemistry. We know we have a lot of work to do. Recruiting still is a big, big part of this process. We’re getting more athletic than we were when we were a Division II program, but we executed as well as we could against probably the best defensive team we could play all year on our schedule.”
On getting any impressions that the Badgers played harder defensively in the second half:
“Wisconsin probably played as hard as they felt they needed to to make sure they won the game and take control of it, but I don’t think (Head Coach) Bo (Ryan) has any kids that take a possession off. I thought they were good all the way through. The shots we made were not un-contested, easy shots. Our kids had to knock them down when they had the opportunity to.”
On the Marquette-Wisconsin game Dec. 11 after playing against both teams:
“They’re both really good programs with great coaches, and they both have great players. I would imagine it being a pretty good matchup between those two (teams). Probably a little different styles: Marquette is more of a full-court deal, and they both play great man-to-man defense, Wisconsin has the ability to switch. I would imagine it would be a very fun game to watch.”
