Feb. 1, 2011
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 
Wisconsin Head Coach Bo Ryan
On Ryan Evans’ emergence tonight:
“There wasn’t any difference in practice, he still works hard. He’s a human being, who, when you get a little bit of success, the tendency is to turn it into more. What he’s been doing in some other games is charging or walking, missing a defensive assignment, things that set the tone the other way. It’s all – are you ready? If you’re ready you get to play more, if not you need to keep working to get ready.”
On the energy from Mike Bruesewitz and Wquinton Smith:
“They’re basketball players on a team, when they’re on the floor, we know it’s inside each of them. How much, and when, taking advantage of opportunities. But there’s no question that was the difference in the game. It added to the whole scheme, defensively they did a nice job, since Purdue can hurt you in many ways. We got a chance to get to the line and make our free throws, and stretch the game a bit. The difference was that we were able to survive the start of the second half and get that turned around.”
On Evans' late-game shot:
“Those are the shots that he can hit, that’s a high percentage shot for him. It wasn’t a surprise, if you look at the baskets he hit last year, those are the types of shots that he shoots a high percentage on.”
On the team’s defense:
“It’s a 40-minute game, and we need to be better. We’re going to have to go to their place and play them still. I didn’t think we did a very good job in the second half getting pressure on the ball, we’ll still take a look at some things.”
On the team’s defensive aggressiveness:
“Sometimes it’s the way the ball bounces; whether they’re clanking them or there are long rebounds. That’s us being active, and we’ve got guys that can do that, they just have to do it all the time.”
On Jon Leuer:
“Jon, he could have taken better care of the ball, he’d like to have a few of those possessions back, but just getting angles, and finishing at the basket, and his threes. It’s pretty good when your two bigs can stretch the defense, and that helped us do some other things and get to the free throw line. It’s all connected.”
On the team’s mentality recovering from a loss:
“Here’s my theory: don’t lose. Sometimes it’s the schedule; who you’re playing, where you’re playing them, sometimes there’s other circumstances involved. I don’t try to read too much into it, I just want our players to be consistent in their work effort, and the little things like how they took care of the ball. I don’t dwell on the loss. If you come to our practices, you’d have no idea what happened the game before, and there is a purpose to that.”
On surviving Purdue’s hot start to the second half:
“Well, they stripped us a few times, and we made a couple of bad decisions on passes. Turnovers feed teams. They feed us. If we can get people to turn it over, we can score off of those. Or at least, attack the other end. Scoring off of turnovers where you don’t have to attack a team’s set defense, is pretty good.”
Redshirt sophomore forward Ryan Evans
On what got him going tonight:
“My coaches and teammates continuing to believe in me. It’s been a rough year for me, but them continuing to believe in me and I knew something had to get me going. I think one of the big things in the second half was Q [Wquinton Smith]. Q had a little tussle with [Lewis] Jackson and (Chancellor] Biddy [Martin]. Biddy announcing that we don’t have school tomorrow. That got the fans going, so it felt really good and hopefully we can keep this going.”
Junior guard Jordan Taylor
On what players like Ryan Evans can do for the team:
“We’ve been talking all year round about how we have guys that people might not think twice about just because they might not be the big names. Ryan has been saying what he can do for this team all year long, and he showed it tonight. He can even add from there. Q did a great job coming in off the bench, and anytime you can get a guy that can get the crowd up like Ryan can it’s big.
“I think that dunk was big, it was almost perfect timing. It doesn’t get any better than that. It got the crowd back into it. The crowd was unbelievable tonight, the student section. Whenever you play a tough opponent like that, you’ll take any advantage you can get. Of course Biddy with that strategic placement of the announcement contributed too.”
On stopping Purdue at the end of the second half:
“I think we just toughened up a little bit (at the end of the second half). They are a good team, one of the best offensive teams in the league, with two of the best players in the league with [E’Twaun] Moore and Jackson. They got away from us a bit. We got a little too comfortable. Everybody who was guarding them just did a great job staying tough. Those guys are going to get their points and the team is going to get their points. The main thing is to stay tough and try to make them uncomfortable. We did a good job of that.”
Senior forward Jon Leuer
On how Wisconsin beat Purdue:
“Well, overall we were unhappy with the way we played Penn State. We knew a hardnosed team like Purdue, just like us, would come in here and try to get on the glass and just beat us up physically. We knew that coming in, and it was important for us to get on the glass and get second-chance points. We’re so good at breaking teams down with our cuts and the more opportunities we get, the better. We definitely wanted to get on the glass, and keep JaJuan [Jackson] and [D.J.] Byrd and all those guys off the glass. They go hard and we did a good job tonight.”
On Purdue’s run:
“We know they are talented and they were going to make a run. You can’t keep JaJuan and E’Twaun down for long, and they made their run. It was a real gut-check. There were a lot of Badgers who helped us and the crowd, the crowd was huge for us. We just kept getting stops and we made our free throws . We knew we were going to have to do that and we did it.”
Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter
Opening statement:
"I thought our guys did a good job in the second half, battling back. We were very fortunate to be in the game. It was a poor offensive execution by us in the first half having 10 turnovers. We were lucky to be in the position we were and be able to be in striking distance and only be down eight. We felt fortunate at halftime, just to be in the game and then our guys really came out and played with some life, played with some energy. We were able to get the ball inside and get JaJuan Johnson established a little bit and that was important.
We made some perimeter jump shots and I thought we put the game in position where were now going back and forth in a possession game down the stretch. That's what you want and if you're going to beat them then, you need to be able to play the last couple minutes of the game. I was proud of our guys effort in the second half and thought we did some real good things, but we had some break downs in the last couple minutes, and that hurt us."
On Purdue's ability to finish:
"They made some big shots, obviously Jordan Taylor's three at the end of the first half was a big shot. They had that nice little run there, that closed the half out. Neither team played well in the first half to be honest with you. They are a good team. Taylor is a tough match-up, Jon Leuer is a tough match-up. I thought the difference tonight was Josh Gasser and Ryan Evans, those two guys stepped up and that's what you need."
On Purdue's offensive spacing in the second half:
"We didn't do a good job the first half of really just passing and catching. When you have 10 turnovers, guys were going too fast they weren't playing under control. We just did a better job with our spacing. I think we had only three turnovers in the second half, which was good."
On how many free throws Wisconsin had:
"The thing that we talked about was not hand-checking them, making sure we kept our hands off of them. We wanted to pressure them and get in to them but be smart. A couple times I thought we over did it a little bit, allowing them to score some points right there. Unless you are going to be able to play through the post, or you are really going to drive the basketball, and that's where Jordan Taylor gets you because he gets angles and drives the basketball to the rim. We wanted to stop him, which is tough to do and we wanted to stop Jon Leuer from getting the ball at the post. So of the free throws at the end, we obviously had to foul, so it wasn't as much, I think, of them offensively."
