WESTERN MiCHIGAN-BOWLING GREEN QUOTES

Western Michigan head coach Steve Hawkins

(On the inside game advantage of Miller and Polk for BGSU) "It's really what it came down to. They combined for 37 points and 22 rebounds, not to mention 20 made free throws. We threw everything at them and our only chance at defending these guys was putting Shawntes at the four trying to match up with Nate Miller and Muhammed was another big body. That wasn't bad. We were behind by too much and we weren't as physical as we needed to be. They took it to us and we couldn't get it slowed and even when they did they had six more offensive rebounds and nine extra points at the free throw line and there you had the ballgame."

(On what concerns him) "The thing that concerns me where we are at right now is when we play against big, thick post players. We're just getting pushed around a lot at the four and five positions and we've got to combat that with extreme intensity. We tried going to zone and couldn't get a rebound out of it. We tried everything in the book in terms of man defense and it didn't matter at all with their size."

(On Demetrius Ward and Muhammed Conteh) "In short, (Ward) was productive. That's the way he is. I thought Muhammed played very well. He didn't get pushed around as much by Polk. He's a bigger, wider body. We didn't have an answer individually inside for both offense and defense. We were either giving up offense to go with certain players or we were giving up defense to go with other players. When you're down seven to 11 there, it stayed in that range. It's not football where you get to go with offensive and defensive teams. More than anything I thought they played hard. They cared a lot. They really prepared well. I've seen both of these kids coming and getting better and better and better. Muhammed gives us some lateral mobility and some bulk inside and he'll grab a couple of offensive rebounds here and there. Demetrius is looking a lot more comfortable offensively and he does a good job defensively. He can rebound the ball from the guard spot."