Indiana head coach Archie Miller, and players Romeo Langford, Rob Phinisee, and Race Thompson met with the media following the Hoosiers' 75-73 double overtime win over Wisconsin Tuesday night.
Read the transcripts or watch their full postgame comments in the embedded video players below.
Indiana Video: Miller, Langford, Phinisee, Thompson
Indiana Transcript: Miller
ARCHIE MILLER: Well, tough, hard fought game, to say the least. Obviously, both teams, I thought, really competed and played hard. Got to give Wisconsin a lot of credit. They're a terrific team. They obviously really know what they're doing with their system on both sides of the ball. But our guys, give them credit as well. I think we're playing extremely hard right now. We've got a lot of different guys thrown in there and trying to help out and do whatever they can.For about 30 minutes, we played probably as well as we have in a Big Ten game, especially at home here recently, just in terms of being able to get stops and obviously offensively getting a cushion. Good teams make runs. That's what we talked about. And being able to respond to that in those last four minutes and then in the overtimes, it was great to see that we didn't sort of lay an egg as we came out not on top on a couple of those plays.
Q. There have been a couple of games prior to tonight where Romeo had the ball in his hands, last shot, regulation opportunity. What did he learn from those situations, just kind of reading the situation better, maybe making a better play?
ARCHIE MILLER: Yeah, Rob did a great job. We asked Rob to come up and interfere a little bit and get out. The minute he did that, I thought their guy just flinched just a quick second. And the minute he did it, I knew Romeo's shoulder was going to get by him, just a matter of whether he'd make it or not. He definitely made an aggressive play. We talked about it after the Iowa game. Don't settle. Get to the rim. Sometimes that's easier said than done, but he made a great play on the finish.
Q. I guess these close games you guys have been playing really this whole month, the wins and the losses. Have you seen, especially the young guys, grow through it? You talked about playing tougher, harder these last few games. Particularly the freshmen and sophomores you had to lean on a little bit more, how have you seen those guys grow from these experiences?
ARCHIE MILLER: We're playing extremely hard right now. Rob Phinisee is playing as good of a perimeter defense as you can probably play as a freshman in this league. He's doing it in a lot of minutes tonight. We've started to see the old Rob come back here a little bit in terms of his aggressiveness. I think that Al is obviously doing a nice job on the perimeter as well. It starts there with us. We have to be able to really work hard and pressure the ball.Obviously, when you play Wisconsin, the ball is going inside 80 percent of the time. I thought our guys hung in there pretty tough tonight. Ethan Happ is a really good player. You don't score 2,000 points and get 1,100 rebounds just by chance, so he's going to be tough to stop. I thought our guys made things hard on him at times, and we were able to rebound the ball well in the second half, especially late.The guys understand how hard you have to play at this level this time of year, and you have to keep getting better with your effort as well, like you can't take a step down because the competition, the quality of the team is so good. I thought that from Purdue, all the way through Iowa and all the way through tonight, we resemble a tough minded group.
Q. Romeo played 45. Al and Rob both played over 40 minutes. What did you see fatigue-wise from your guys?ARCHIE MILLER: I didn't see a whole lot of fatigue. Obviously, De'Ron was sick before the game. I give him credit for bouncing back and giving us 20 minutes after he was sick to start. Race Thompson playing 21 minutes was incredible, asking him to do what he's doing right now, gets the seven defensive rebounds, which was good.Our perimeter guys had a good rhythm out there for most of the night, and we stuck with those guys, and they played long minutes.
Q. Just to kind of follow up a little bit on Race, what's he shown you that's kind of allowed you to really trust him and play crucial minutes like he did tonight?
ARCHIE MILLER: He's got more physicality than we're accustomed to. He can bang. He can mix it up a little bit. The other think is he's a really good rebounder per minute. He's rebounding the ball on both ends of the floor for us in his minutes that he's given. He's been able to do that. So that's a big step for him to come in.His offense isn't anywhere near -- he's not sure right now what he's supposed to do or what he can do. I think he'll end up being more helpful as the season continues to progress as he gets some confidence.
Q. It's three straight games where you held your opponent under 30 percent from behind the three-point line. Those are three teams that really like to live out there offensively. You talked about things starting on the perimeter for you defensively. But what's maybe changed about the way you're attacking teams and running them off the three-point line?
ARCHIE MILLER: I think it starts right with the perimeter guys. Our toughness on the ball has been excellent. Our ability to get over screens and be there on the catch and our ability to chase shooters right now is as good as it's been all year. So we're eliminating some of the easy ones that we were giving up.You give up threes when you turn the ball over. And I think just recently here we haven't turned it over as much, and they haven't gotten any breakaways or just bunches of threes.It comes back around. You look at the field goal percentage defense in this game, and at the end of the day, you hold Wisconsin to 39 percent and 27 from three at home, you should win those games. Tonight was one we were able to pull out.
Q. How much did tonight remind you of the team you guys had in December?
ARCHIE MILLER: Yeah, I think that our guys look like they're playing with more confidence right now. They're using their energy level and their effort to give them confidence, which is what we had at one point in the season. We weren't always perfect on offense, and we weren't shooting the ball well, but the one thing we had is we had a confidence about us that we can compete and we can play hard and we can defend, and we're doing that again.You can start to see the guys on the bench, guys checking in the game, they understand right now this is what it's about for us right now. You've got to survive every single opportunity you can, and you have to make sure you take advantage of it.Our attitude is good right now. You don't watch us practice, and I don't leave practice saying these guys aren't all there right now. That's not the case. We stay with that, we have more opportunities down the line to see if we can't get a couple more.
Q. Is there an extra benefit for this game just to have three finishes of double overtime for the young team here, just three weeks left in the season, pressures up ahead of you?
ARCHIE MILLER: I want to get these things over as fast as we can, man. The extra periods come down to so many free throws or execution plays, getting stops, and giving them credit, obviously making big shots and making free throws.But we were in it the whole way. We were engaged with one another. Our bench was engaged. I thought the guys in the time-out in the huddles, even moving into the second overtime, I was a little bit nervous we could have been a little bit down. We had the lead there. We make a mistake and foul. At the end of the day, we can't pout. They didn't pout. They didn't worry about any mistakes. They just kept hanging in there and hanging tough.We'll see. You know, like I said, I felt our effort level against Purdue was fantastic. I thought our effort level against Iowa for the most part was really good. I thought tonight, for good portions of the game, we really played hard. That's where it starts for us. That's where good things can start to happen for you if you have that.
Q. Archie, along those lines, you said you're playing with more confidence. How do you get confidence when you're not winning? How do these guys maintain it or grow it?
ARCHIE MILLER: It's hard. Negativity, losing, all that stuff isn't fun. But I think our guys have taken a pretty good approach. We're coming down the homestretch. We only have so many opportunities to practice right now. Can you utilize your practice and have a great day competing? When you leave the gym as a player or a coach right now, do you feel like your team is struggling? No, I think we're playing harder. We're more committed to the process again.I think just in general you're starting to see the team sort of resemble itself a little bit just in terms of how you can muddy things up, how you can play hard when things aren't going well. I think, once you get that going, hopefully your defense to offense can create some things going for you. You can get some easy ones, which we did at times tonight. And that's the thing you hope for.You can sort of start to get a little bit more contagious in terms of your confidence. Sometimes it's not always about making shots. It's about making plays. We had a lot of different guys make a lot of different plays tonight, step up and make some plays. They should feel good about that. We have another opportunity Saturday against Michigan State. Obviously, we know how good they are.
Q. How important has it been to sustain the energy from the last few games, and how much did that factor into the way execution came around tonight?
ARCHIE MILLER: We've been in some real tough ones, and we've learned some lessons on some things we can and can't do. For the most part, I thought we rebounded the ball late in the game better, and I thought we didn't turn the ball over. We ended up getting some shots at the basket late in the game, and they just didn't go in. Romeo had a couple of good ones. De'Ron has a layup. It wasn't like we were coming up empty every time. We got shots.Being able to stick one in at the end when there's no time left obviously feels so much better. We've been there so many times. We've been there. I think, when you get there, you've got to find a way to break through. Obviously, that allows you to be better moving forward. Hopefully, we can be a team that continues to kind of thrive here late in the season and find a way to get another win one after another.
Indiana Transcript: Langford, Phinisee, Thompson
Q. What did you see on that last play just kind of how did you get him kind of moving the wrong way to open that lane?
ROMEO LANGFORD: Rob came up to the screen and they messed up the read on it. I just seen the lane to get to the basket and that's just what I did.
Q. Race, you're getting some meaningful minutes in the game and getting dumped in the fire in the overtime period. How do you keep yourself calm and composed and how do you think you performed?
RACE THOMPSON: I kept calm because my teammates, I know they have faith in me, like you got in. This is like what we do for a living, so there was no reason for me to be nervous or nothing. That's what I do. I just played to my strengths and did what I had to do.
Q. For all of you guys, so many of these types of close games have gone against you guys this season. What made tonight different?
ROB PHINISEE: I would say the home crowd. Home crowd got into it and I felt like that boosted us and the next man up stepped up and that helped us a lot.
Q. Race, you've been able to go against Davis and Morgan in practice consistently. How did that help you in your match-up today against Ethan?
RACE THOMPSON: It helped me a lot, going against them every day is not easy, at all. They are really good players.So we help each other every day in practice, so really help each other. That's it.
Q. For any of you three guys, it's a double overtime game and you're all freshmen and you're the ones sitting in here talking about it. I know some guys fouled out, but for a young team, how much of a learning experience have some of these close games been?
ROMEO LANGFORD: Like you said we've been in a lot of close games and this team is majority young and a lot of new faces on to the scene, but I feel like the games we played in the first half of the season and the games we played in the second half which just came down to the wire, prepared us for this. We learned from our mistakes from the ones we lost and came out on top today.
Q. For any of you, after the Minnesota game, it would have been easy for you to just play out the rest of the season, but the last three games, you only won one. You've shown a lot of fight. What's kept this team together and continue to go play hard despite the losing?
ROB PHINISEE: I would say the leadership from the J-Mo and just the seniors. We don't want to go out on a bad note, like you said, we could have did that. But we stayed together and we're going to keep fighting.
Q. One of you guys mentioned the close games you played in the first half of the season. Did tonight remind you of the team you were in December, the sort of games that you won during that stretch?
ROMEO LANGFORD: I felt like the last three games really remind us of ourselves in the beginning of the suspect, just how hard we've been playing and hold ourselves on defense even though we came up short. Especially tonight, we went into two overtimes and beginning of the season, we didn't give up on a teammate around us; and Wisconsin they made a run on us when we got up by ten and came back and took the lead. And we didn't panic and just stayed with it.
Q. For any of you, from an emotional standpoint, what does pulling out a victory, not only tap something in the win column, but in style, double overtime, what does it do for the confidence?
ROB PHINISEE: It is a confidence booster. We have to build on that and take it one game at a time and bring it for Michigan State on Saturday.
Q. Romeo, what did it mean to just come through with a shot like that, basically? You've had the ball in your hands late in the game in certain situations this time of year, just take it to somebody. What does it mean to you when you have the ball in your hand at the end to be the guy who makes that shot?
ROMEO LANGFORD: I mean, just finally, I hit one. I mean, I know the past two times, I had it in my hand to end the game and it didn't come out as we planned, but I learned from mistakes in the past, too, and settling for a jump shot, felt like they couldn't stop me from getting to the rim and that's exactly what I did and I made the shot.
----
• Talk about it inside The Hoops Forum or The Football Forum
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Follow us on Twitter: @IndianaRivals
• Like us on Facebook.
