Video, Quotes: IU players react to win over Evansville
Jeff Howard (two points, three rebounds), Jeremy Hollowell (career-high 18 points, three rebounds) and Noah Vonleh (13 points, 12 rebounds) met with the media following Indiana’s 77-46 win over Evansville on Tuesday night at Assembly Hall.
Watch their postgame comments in the media player below:
Quotes are available after the jump.
Q. Talk about starting tonight.
JEFF HOWARD: I found out before the game. I’ve been working hard in practice. Coach did what he did for his reasons and I came in and brought to the team what I bring to the team and that’s pretty much it. I just try to talk a lot, being a senior, helping some guys out on the floor, defensively, a lot of stuff like that. Just energy, little things. Obviously I’m not going to score a lot of points but I had to defend, rebound and talk.
Q. Jeremy, what was working for you? 18 points in 17 minutes.
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: My shot was falling, attack the basket to get to the free throw line, seeing the extra work payoff on my jumpshot, I’ve been getting a lot of reps, seeing that payoff, I feel like that’s really helping a lot. That’s pretty much it.
Q. Do you feel like you’re at your best when you’re getting to the FT line?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: Definitely feel like I have to use that to my advantage, attacking the basket. 7 for 8, knocking them down so just have to keep using that to my advantage.
Q. Were you surprised you didn’t start tonight?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: Coach made his decision, Jeff came in, he did a great job. He capitalized on his opportunity, and it was Coach’s decision and went along with it.
Q. Did it feel any different coming off the bench for the 2nd time this year?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: I came off the bench one time this year, but got it going with the right mind set, playing the game- just go in and impact the game and that’s what I felt like I did.
Q. Does it really matter who starts with how deep you are?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: Not really. We’ve got a deep team. A lot of different guys come in and play different positions. I mean, it really doesn’t matter to focus on it if you think about it, but it is what it is.
Q. Another double double, what was working for you tonight?
NOAH VONLEH: They were trying to send two guys on me. Just working my way through and just going hard after the rebounds.
Q. What did you learn from the last game (getting in foul trouble).
NOAH VONLEH: It was a great learning experience. I’ve just got to pump my feet more on the screens and just have my hand straight up when I’m playing a guy and don’t put my head up into the defender arm because I got a foul today like I did in the UCONN game.
Q. How much did you feel that translated tonight for you, the four fouls?
NOAH VONLEH: I just tried to not think about it and just kept staying aggressive.
Q. Talk about playing against a team that was averaging 90 points a game?
JEFF HOWARD: Our focus is always on defense. We think that when we play defensively, it creates offense for us. So we come to the game, we knew that they were leading the country in some field goal percentages, three point field goal percentages so we took that personally and didn’t want to allow them to come in here and match some numbers that they were putting up. We had guys like Will and Evan getting double digit deflections. Everyone came out with the mind set that we had to stop them and we couldn’t let them get open shots, they were all on emotion, and we had to get our switches right and our talk right. We definitely came into the game with a defensive mind set.
Q. What did you do well defensively that led them to shooting under 30%?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: I feel like with this team, we have a good job switching team, a lot of people can guard a lot of different guys, so, I mean, not so much we have to fight through the screens all the time. We can switch, not switch just to switch, but switch to help us out and take things away and I think that is really beneficial to us.
Q. What did you do well guarding specifically D.J. Balentine?
JEREMY HOLLOWELL: I think getting up and throwing it making him put it on the floor a lot more. Like I said, when he was coming off the screens, we really switched it a lot and coming off, we tried to double and blitz it and get it out of his hands.
Q. How did it feel to knock down that three?
NOAH VONLEH: It was wide open. They backed off me, it felt pretty good job.
Filed to: Jeff Howard, Jeremy Hollowell, Noah Vonleh