BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 11, 2026

Danny Sprinkle

Quimari Peterson

Zoom Diallo

United Center

Washington Huskies

Postgame Press Conference

Washington - 83, USC - 79

THE MODERATOR: We have student-athletes Zoom Diallo and Quimari Peterson. We're now joined by Coach Danny Sprinkle.

DANNY SPRINKLE: Awesome win. First Big Ten tournament win in our school's history. It couldn't come in a better fashion for this group. Adversity hasn't defined us all year. This group's been through a lot. We've got eight players right now. For them to continue to fight and to keep coming back, I wish we wouldn't dig ourselves such a big deficit each game.

They don't quit, man. They keep fighting, and somehow somebody keeps making a big play. Whether it's a big defensive stop, whether it's making a huge three. I think Quimari's 3, we were up one and he hit a three with a minute left to put it at four. That was huge. Those are back-breaking plays.

Zoom was terrific. Playing with four fouls the last 12:30 of the second half. I think he had a double-double that second half. It was tremendous. Everybody stepped up. I thought Courtland's 3, when he made it, it was huge.

It came down to getting stops and guarding without fouling in that last five minutes of regulation, really eight minutes of regulation, and then overtime. Just kept finding a way to win.

Q. Coming out of the half, you guys were down by seven, what was going on in your guys' heads?

QUIMARI PETERSON: We've been in this situation before. We know what we got to do. Buy into coach's game plan and take care of itself. If we go out there and work hard and get to the loose balls more, that's what we were missing and the rebounding, and we did it in the second half.

Q. I guess for both of you, Wesley fouls out. How does that change the way you guys play as a team and your roles in particular on the ball?

ZOOM DIALLO: Wesley brings a defensive mentality to our team. Him being out was a little hurtful. That means next man up. Guys got to step up.

It was just coming down to who was going to make the big play towards the end of the game. We've been in position like that where a dude's been in foul trouble or a dude's been out hurt. It was just one of those guys. We need five to fight, and we had five to fight.

I want to shout out my teammate Courtland. He came in and stepped up big for us, and him just owning the moment. I feel like the last few games he came up and wanted to part of the moment. With Wes being out and him taking over, that definitely helped us.

Q. I wanted to ask about just kind of the grind of this season, traveling a lot, things have been kind of up and down, and then you get into a situation where you're down. What is it kind of intrinsically that kind of pushed you guys to fight through everything and persevere and win this game into overtime?

QUIMARI PETERSON: I feel like the brotherhood we created. We've been through a lot. During the summer we had the camp stuff, and we had to sleep together. We did a lot of things together, and I feel like we built a huge relationship with each other. I'm just glad to have these guys. I'm glad to be a part of this.

ZOOM DIALLO: Most definitely. Again, we've been through a lot of adversity. There's so much trust with each other as players. We've been bonding in the hotel, all together, all playing games. I feel like that comes a long way having that brotherhood and trusting one another. You never know what can happen in these games, having trust.

That's what we've been through all season. Coach always says all we need is five. The five we have is willing to fight, and we're going to do it every time, every game.

THE MODERATOR: Any more questions for the student-athletes?

DANNY SPRINKLE: I got a question for you. Why do you guys keep getting down 15 points in the half? Can you cut that out?

ZOOM DIALLO: Coach, we've got to stop that.

DANNY SPRINKLE: I like that.

Q. I just had a question, this tournament goes for so many days. You guys already have a game today where you go into overtime, play an extra five minutes. How do you manage a tournament where you could be playing back-to-back-to-back days --

DANNY SPRINKLE: I hope we are.

Q. -- and you already have such a limited rotation as well?

DANNY SPRINKLE: At this time, you don't get tired. When you're a player in March -- we've got plenty of media timeouts. You've got fouls. We've got plenty of time to rest. Our guys, they'll be ready tomorrow.

At this point, there's no excuses. Everybody's dealing with foul trouble, guys out, so gotta hoop.

Q. So you guys struggled against Wisconsin heavily the last matchup. What's the outlook in tomorrow's game playing against a team that you really couldn't do much against?

DANNY SPRINKLE: What did you say?

Q. You guys struggled a lot against Wisconsin the last match.

DANNY SPRINKLE: Yeah, we struggled a lot. Credit to them, they made 17 or 18 3s in that game. Hopefully shooting in this big ole arena for the first time and us having a game under our belt, hopefully they don't knock down that many 3s. But that's who they are and what they do.

They've got elite shooters. They've got two of the best guards in the league, and they're going to be coming with a chip on their shoulder because they both could have easily been first-team all league.

I believe that playing against those two, that's what they do. Their bigs can really shoot the basketball. Their whole team can shoot the basketball. They pose a lot of problems.

We're going to have to do a much better job with our energy and our force. I thought we were on our heels last time, and we didn't really respond to the adversity that well when they started making those 3s, got on those runs. We have to do a better job guarding them and taking care of the basketball on the offensive end.

Q. Hannes only had 10 points, 4 of 10 shooting. First, what does it mean to have other guys who were able to step up when he has a down game? Second, how do you get it going tomorrow?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Yeah, other guys have got to step up. They're going to get shots. I thought USC, they did a great job game planning. They made it hard for him. Sometimes they'd come double and sometimes they'd come dig it out. I thought they did a great job boxing him out, sending multiple guys at him. All that does is create lanes for other guys.

I thought we made them play a little bit more in the second half. Courtland hit a big 3. Wesley hit some. Quimari got some off the attention that Hannes was getting. When teams are guarding him like that, these other guys are plenty capable.

For us to make 11 3s, that was great. I wasn't worried because you look at the games yesterday and today, it's such a great shooting league, and some of the great shooting teams haven't shot well in this arena. I was like we haven't shot the ball well this year, and I said, come on, watch, we're going to come out and hit 10, 11 3s. That's what happened. Hopefully we do that again tomorrow.