Dec. 12, 2010
Ohio Head Coach John Groce:
On the game:
Obviously I don’t want to take any credit away from them as they made plays down the stretch, but this is as disappointing a home loss for us since I’ve been the coach here. We’ve got to get some things figured out. I thought our mindset was poor. I thought our togetherness was average at best and if you don’t have the proper effort as a team and don’t have the proper team attitude, the X’s and O’s really don’t matter. We’ve got a lot to work on the next two days and we’ll ratchet it up so that we can be better on Wednesday night.
Ohio Senior Guard Tommy Freeman
On the last eight minutes of the game:
Their two wings stepped up and made plays when they needed it and we weren’t able to respond. At our end, we had some misses around the basket and our 3’s stopped falling. They just made plays and we were having trouble stopping them on the defensive end and that’s when we just have to come together as a unit. Those last eight minutes are when we need to be playing our best defense of the game and it just wasn’t there.
On his play:
Physically I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve been kind’ve anxious to just get out there and play a little bit. I just tried to take what they were giving me and we knew with that matchup zone that we were going to get a lot of “tee-up†shots from the perimeter. We tried to have an inside attack and when the bigs passed it back out, I wanted to have my feet set ready to shoot.
On IUPUI’s defense on D.J. Cooper:
They did a good job scouting him. When teams focus on him, our other guys are going to have to step up. D.J. did give other guys opportunities to succeed and that didn’t happen when their gameplan tried to take him out of the game.
Ohio Senior Forward DeVaughn Washington
On the last eight minutes of the game:
I just don’t think we played hard. They just came out and kept their minds right the whole game and we started to stray away from what we were trying to do and that was due to a lack of effort.
On starting the game vs. coming off the bench:
It doesn’t matter. I still have to go out, play defense, do my job and play my role.
