Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest vs. Illinois
11/29/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Wake Forest Head Coach Danny Manning
Opening Statement...
"I thought the game tonight was an extremely tough ball game in regards to how Illinois has competed. They did a tremendous job on the glass. They had 17 offensive rebounds and they had a physical presence all game. There were times when we met that physicality and it put us in a situation to have some success. I think that all the guys that stepped on the court for us contributed something. It was a very good team win for us. Hopefully, it is something that we can build upon. We have to attack the glass like they attacked the glass tonight."
On Bryant Crawford's finger...
"Something didn't look right. I looked at it. It was in the heat of the ball game. He tried to get a timeout but couldn't get a timeout. Then he ran down the court and fouled somebody just to come off the court. I take him for granted with injuries. He popped his shoulder out a Duke last year, ran to the locker room, came back out 10 minutes later and said, 'Coach, I'm ready to go.' So I figured that if it was a finger, he'd be alright. But something didn't look quite right so it's taped up right now. The finger didn't bother him on the shot, it was just when he was going back on defensive end."
On how to build off tonight's win...
"It's always nice to win. I'll never apologize for winning. You never do that. Yes, we have to get better in different areas, but we're no different than any other team in the country. There's not one coach in America that's looking at his team thinking that 'we're perfect. We're a masterpiece. We got it all figured out.' No, nobody is like that right now. Everybody is still trying to master their offensive and defensive schemes and we're no different. Our flaws have come out earlier than some teams simply because we've lost games early. It's created a little bit more of a sense of urgency for us, but we know that we have to continue to get better. We understand that."
Illinois Head Coach Brad Underwood
Opening Statement...
"I'm proud of our guys. I thought it was a hard fought game. I thought we got off to a great start. We withstood the first half which I was really pleased with. Michael Finke, who has been playing as well as anybody, got two early fouls and then Te'Jon Lucas, who is our quarterback, our play caller, was really ineffective in the first half. I'm really proud of Trent Frazier and the job that he did, containing things throughout the half. We had some ups and downs. We had a bad stretch in the first half. If you combine the five turnovers that we had, it turns into a run when you're on the road. Wake Forest is a veteran team and they had guys who made plays. I liked our fight and I liked our competitiveness. We probably shot too many threes tonight, but we're a good shooting team and most nights we're going to make those. Again, congrats to Danny Manning and to that team. They've been fun to watch as then continue to get better and find their way."
On problems finishing around the rim...
"7'1" and 280 lbs. will do that to you. That's something that we have to learn from, but I'll take getting shots at the rim all day. If we miss them, then we miss them. We had 17 offensive rebounds- I'll take that every single night. When we go on the road and we get 17 rebounds, get 15 more field goal attempts and clean up our turnovers, we're going to win most nights."
On Aaron Jordan's shooting tonight...
"AJ's not leading the country in field goal shooting for nothing. He's a good shooter and I thought that we did a good job of trying to find him. We had 15 assists tonight which isn't bad on 24 field goals. We are going to do everything that we can to get Michael and AJ good looks at the rim."
On Wake Forest's zone defense...
"We were not really surprised because we run a very similar offense to what Drake runs, and they didn't have a whole lot of success guarding Drake. We had planned on seeing a ton of zone."
