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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2014Devyn Roy MarbleFran McCafferyJarrod UthoffINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Northwestern – 67 Q. Can you guys put a finger on maybe what's been going wrong and causing this late season slump that kind of bled over into today? DEVYN MARBLE: Can you repeat the question? Q. You guys have obviously been in a little bit of a late season slump here, six out of seven. Can you put your finger on what's gone wrong? DEVYN MARBLE: Well, early in the season, we were defending a lot better. I think we're giving up too many quality shots to opponents and they've been making them, and everybody is a Division I player, so if you give them open shots they're going to knock them down. I just think we have to work on our communication and work on our rotations in and out of slots and stuff like that. JARROD UTHOFF: He covered it. Defensive intensity. I think we need to bring it more. Q. Roy, I just want to know what the players thought about the tee shirts you guys have that say D MAC and what that meant for the Coach. DEVYN MARBLE: We created them. We had them come in the other day in practice. We love Coach McCaffery and his family a lot. They've done a lot for all of us. When one person is feeling down, we're all feeling down. He's family, and we just want to know Coach McCaffery that we've got his back and that we'd be here. Q. Coach, I know you guys are going through a very tough time, you in particular. But the question I have is: I made this comment earlier about Ohio State, I wondered after two victories against Purdue, how would they play against a team that they clearly were better than, and they almost lost. You guys blew out Northwestern two times this year. Was there any kind of letdown coming into this where you want to win the tournament but maybe you didn't look at Northwestern or your kids didn't look at them? COACH MCCAFFERY: I really don't think that was the case. I think we have to give more credit to this Northwestern team and how they played. I don't want to say that we didn't take them seriously enough. We're thinking down the road. We have great respect for Drew Crawford. Anybody that's scored 1900 points, he should have your full attention. I thought Olah over the last month, one of the best ‑‑ or should say one of the most improved players in the country. We know Kale Abrahamson can score the ball. Sobolewski has been banged up all year. He's playing better, played well today. In this league you're playing a team that has beaten people, and they made 11 threes. You know, you've got to tip your hat to a team that shares the ball in a way to make 11 threes. They weren't just dribbling down and shooting it. They were moving the ball and running stuff, whether it's against man or zone, and finding each other. You know, we out‑rebounded them. We didn't particularly turn it over a lot. We were 0‑9 in the second half from three. It's hard. We were right there. We were fighting. I think at this point you have to say Northwestern played well. They played better than us today. Q. Aaron White had two scores right at the beginning of the game there and didn't attempt a shot the rest of the game. Do you want to talk about what Northwestern did to limit his attempts? COACH MCCAFFERY: I mean, I think they guarded him closely. He's a marquee guy, they're switching, they're up into him. He's got the green light. He turned down some shot opportunities to move the ball. I give him credit. Q. How do you hit the reset button now heading towards postseason play and clear the team's mind of the way the season has ended for them? COACH MCCAFFERY: There's no magic formula. You just have to keep working. What we've said over these last two weeks is you work your way out of things like this. You don't talk your way out of it, you don't fake your way out of it, you work your way out of it, and you stay positive. We'll stay positive as coaches, but we'll stay positive with one another. You can't start pointing fingers and blaming each other. You know, my conversation after the game was very positive with regard to that because I believe in this team and the character that we have in that locker room. Q. What specifically do you think you want to work on? I know this one is fresh, but what do you think you drill down on over the next week or so? COACH MCCAFFERY: I really think when you're losing, it's never one thing. It's easy to point at the defense. We gave up, what, 52 and 48 for three, so it's easy to say, okay, your defense was terrible. But maybe it's a component, like late shot clock defense wasn't what it needed to be. Overall I thought our half court defense was pretty good at times. I think Dev hit on‑‑ our rotations are not what they need to be. Going to work on that. Offensively we're struggling. We shot 25 percent from three, we shot 25 percent in the second half, we shot 32 percent for the game. Okay, so is that execution? Is it offensive patience? Is it poor execution in transition? We'll watch film, we'll break it down, we'll do drills, we'll work individually with individual players. And like I say, we'll stay positive and address all of those areas. Q. You kind of touched on this a little bit. Marble scores 25, the rest of the four starters have seven. Can you kind of explain that? COACH MCCAFFERY: Well, I kind of went away from the starting lineup because of how Uthoff was playing and how Olaseni was playing in particular, so they took the bulk of Basabe and Woodbury's minutes. Mike was 0 for 10. He's been great. I love him. He had a rough night, couldn't get one to fall. A pull‑up, a drive, a three, couldn't get one to fall. I had to work Josh and Pete into the lineup while we're struggling offensively. So do you downshift and go small, do you stay big, and we did both. We pressed, we zoned, we went man, we went small, we went big, pushing different buttons. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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