WESTERN MICHIGAN - NORTHERN ILLINOIS QUOTES
Northern Illinois Head Coach Ricardo Patton
"I thought it was a
great basketball game. It was hard-fought. Western Michigan is as good as
anybody in the league. Their kids know how to play the game, they play
extremely hard. To start the game they were on fire. They hit some big shots.
We were down 14 points and I think it said a lot about our guys to come back to
tie it at halftime.
"It's always critical at the end of the game when
teams are trying to stop the clock, to hit those. I think we got the ball into
the hands of the guys late who were able to make those free throws.
"Xavier didn't shoot the ball extremely well today but his presence on
the floor was certainly felt. Defensively, he was all over the place. He
defended well, he blocked shots and that's what we needed him to do and that's a
tribute to his competitive spirit.
"Mike DiNunno is becoming the point
guard we had envisioned. He had 10 assists, three turnovers. He did a nice job
running the team. It's good to have two guys out there that you're comfortable
running the point in Jake Anderson and Mike.
"Sean Kowal is relishing
his role of coming off the bench. He is facing a fatigued starter or a back-up
post and they are going to have a difficult time defending him in there.
"Every team has a go-to guy, but I like teams where you don't have to
rely on one guy. You've got to guard DiNunno, you've got to guard Jake, and
you've got to guard Silas, Kowal. Western Michigan is the same way, you can't
just stop Kool.
"We've shortened the bench a little bit. The
non-conference schedule is a chance to evaluate and see how things work, don't
work, but by the time you get into league play
"I told the guys in the
locker room after the game, a lot of people probably gave up on us early because
no one wants to admit we played a [heck] of a schedule that I think we're going
to benefit from, have benefitted from. I knew we were a better shooting team
than we had shown early on. I think we can be a pretty good shooting team.
Sean Kowal
"That (attacking the offensive glass) was the
game plan. We knew they were a physical team, we knew we had to play physical,
even more so than we usually play. We crashed the offensive glass, we got put
backs, we boxed out.
Mike DiNunno
"I think the main
thing (difference in his game) is not focusing on my scoring. Now that I'm
finding everybody else, people are keying on Xavier and Jake and Sean and that
opens up the lanes. Today, it opened up the pick and
roll."
Guard David Kool
(On the game) "It all kind of seemed to snowball on us tonight. We gave them our best shot right away and they came out and punched right back at us and we kind of laid back a little bit. They showed what a good team does to a good team at their place. They took care of business tonight and give all the credit in the world to them. They came out and out-rebounded us and out-physicaled us and that's our game."
(What did you learn from this game) "We can't take possessions off. We can't take our foot off the gas pedal. When we were up (14), we kind of backed off a little bit. On the road, against a good team like Northern Illinois, you can't take possessions off because when they get a little bit of a run going everybody turns into a great player and that's what they did tonight. They out-manned us and we didn't bow up to the challenge at all."
Forward Martelle McLemore
(On NIU winning the rebounding battle) "The MAC is a very physical conference and the tough team wins. They out-physicaled us and came away with rebounds. We've got to learn from this."
Head Coach Steve Hawkins
(On the game) "It was just one of those situations where we didn't play quite good enough. I thought both teams played pretty well. They certainly shot the ball well. We just didn't do certain things. We had been playing well. I picked up the student newspaper in the hotel and it said they need to beat the Broncos in order to win the MAC West. We have four guys in the locker room who know what it's like to be wearing our uniform when you're playing well. The freshmen and sophomores don't understand that you're going to get everybody's best shot. Everybody gets up a little bit more, they play a little bit better, a little bit harder. Northern Illinois is shooting 28 percent from three and go 12-of-20. DiNunno is shooting 23 percent from three and goes 6-of-9 from three. We've got to respond to that a little bit better than we did. We made some defensive adjustments and I thought the kids did a good job with that. The area we didn't win was the rebounding thing and that's the kind of thing we had been doing. You've got to play better if you're going to win on the road in the MAC."
