Postgame Quotes: Wisconsin vs. Green Bay
December 23, 2015 | Men's Basketball
Coach Quotes
Men's Basketball Postgame Quotes
Wisconsin vs. Green Bay
December 23, 2015
Kohl Center – Madison, Wis.
Head Coach Greg Gard
On his opening statement:
"First of all, I'm very appreciative of the support we've had over the last nine days since Coach (Bo) Ryan's decision to retire. The team has been phenomenal. I can't say enough about how great they've been and how they've bonded together and jumped behind this. They've faced some tough times, and last Tuesday night was kind of emotional, but Wednesday I thought they jumped back into it pretty well. To have minimal amount of practice and to have to handle this transition, along with taking finals at the same time, I couldn't be more proud of our guys. I wasn't really proud of them for most of that second half, but the way they fought and battled and how they've overcome what's been thrown at them over the past week and how they've bonded together. For all the support, I recognize that and the applause when I came out. I'm appreciative of that. Obviously, I'm one of the Wisconsin residents. This wouldn't be possible without all of the people in this room tonight who didn't get a chance to be here last Wednesday for the press conference. My family is here, my mom, my aunts and uncles, brothers, their wives, and all my nieces and nephews. Obviously the most important team is my team at home—Mackenzie, Isaac, and Peyton and my wife, Michelle. I've thanked everybody in the program internally over the last week and our players. There's no way this is possible without my team at home for me to assume this position. I didn't get a chance to thank them last Wednesday because they couldn't be here because they were all in school when I was doing this. I'm so honored to be in this position and hopefully keep moving forward."
On his emotions towards losing the 30-point lead:
"I'm going to petition the NCAA rules committee to bring back that extra timeout that we lost this year. Instead of having four, we needed five, six, seven, or eight. We just had to keep battling. I thought we got disjointed offensively. We did so many good things in the first half and even in the start of the second half. We played through the post, we were able to spread the floor and move and cut. As we added this package to our offensive repertoire Thursday, and really only ran it for two days live against the defense, I thought we handled that. That was my concern coming into this. I knew how much they pressured and how they played and that we might get rattled in that format. But I thought in the half court for the most part, we have a lot of things to work on. We threw the ball away at times, but for the most part in the first half and a small segment in the second half, we did some good things in the half court. Obviously, full court-wise, at times we handled it well, but we've got a long way to go. Some of it's positioning, and some of it is waiting for the trap to come to you. We didn't attack at times we could've. We didn't wait for traps to come. We didn't ball-fake. We didn't jump-stop. It wasn't a good display there, but we'll get better, and that's the one thing that I told the team. If there's ever a tale of two halves, this is it. There are a lot of things we can learn from that we did really well, but there's a lot of things that we need to correct and continue to move forward. The emotion of it, you just try to play possession-by-possession. I didn't really know we were up 30 points until I was just on the radio show and they said that. How they play is exactly what we saw. They've done that to every team that they've played. Either they're in a flurry the first half that we had to battle off, or it's been a flurry in the second half like we had to face tonight."
On the offensive package he put in on Thursday:
"It's nothing elaborate from a standpoint of spacing, ball and body movement, and making sure our angles were proper. You've seen it here before in different formats called the swing. We're in the very elementary, infancy stages of it. We're nowhere near where we need to be, but again, we showed some good things for only having it for two days and never really running it live against a defense. I thought we did some good things."
Green Bay Head Coach Linc Darner
On his opening statement:
"I thought when we got down 30 (points), the game was probably over. I give our guys a lot of credit. They never quit. They kept battling back, and one thing I talked with them about was about our system and how the game is never over whether we're up 20 or down 20, you can always come back because of the way that we play. I thought our guys did a great job of battling back. The part that killed us in the first half was when we missed 16 straight shots. We got the lead, we were double-teaming Bronson Koenig, and then he got two quick fouls, which kind of hurt us because we weren't prepared for that. I thought our pressure at the beginning bothered them, but then we couldn't score. We went probably 10 or 12 minutes where we didn't score, and we couldn't get up and pressure them even though we thought that one thing we could do was pressure them. We wanted to try to do different things and take different guys away, make different guys try to handle it. There in the last 13 minutes we just kind of went all out. I thought our guys did a good job, and we got some steals and we scored and we were able to get back into it. We got it to a one-possession game, and we were shooting a one-and-one. What more could you ask for with a minute left when we were down 30 with 13 minutes to go."
Wisconsin vs. Green Bay
December 23, 2015
Kohl Center – Madison, Wis.
Head Coach Greg Gard
On his opening statement:
"First of all, I'm very appreciative of the support we've had over the last nine days since Coach (Bo) Ryan's decision to retire. The team has been phenomenal. I can't say enough about how great they've been and how they've bonded together and jumped behind this. They've faced some tough times, and last Tuesday night was kind of emotional, but Wednesday I thought they jumped back into it pretty well. To have minimal amount of practice and to have to handle this transition, along with taking finals at the same time, I couldn't be more proud of our guys. I wasn't really proud of them for most of that second half, but the way they fought and battled and how they've overcome what's been thrown at them over the past week and how they've bonded together. For all the support, I recognize that and the applause when I came out. I'm appreciative of that. Obviously, I'm one of the Wisconsin residents. This wouldn't be possible without all of the people in this room tonight who didn't get a chance to be here last Wednesday for the press conference. My family is here, my mom, my aunts and uncles, brothers, their wives, and all my nieces and nephews. Obviously the most important team is my team at home—Mackenzie, Isaac, and Peyton and my wife, Michelle. I've thanked everybody in the program internally over the last week and our players. There's no way this is possible without my team at home for me to assume this position. I didn't get a chance to thank them last Wednesday because they couldn't be here because they were all in school when I was doing this. I'm so honored to be in this position and hopefully keep moving forward."
On his emotions towards losing the 30-point lead:
"I'm going to petition the NCAA rules committee to bring back that extra timeout that we lost this year. Instead of having four, we needed five, six, seven, or eight. We just had to keep battling. I thought we got disjointed offensively. We did so many good things in the first half and even in the start of the second half. We played through the post, we were able to spread the floor and move and cut. As we added this package to our offensive repertoire Thursday, and really only ran it for two days live against the defense, I thought we handled that. That was my concern coming into this. I knew how much they pressured and how they played and that we might get rattled in that format. But I thought in the half court for the most part, we have a lot of things to work on. We threw the ball away at times, but for the most part in the first half and a small segment in the second half, we did some good things in the half court. Obviously, full court-wise, at times we handled it well, but we've got a long way to go. Some of it's positioning, and some of it is waiting for the trap to come to you. We didn't attack at times we could've. We didn't wait for traps to come. We didn't ball-fake. We didn't jump-stop. It wasn't a good display there, but we'll get better, and that's the one thing that I told the team. If there's ever a tale of two halves, this is it. There are a lot of things we can learn from that we did really well, but there's a lot of things that we need to correct and continue to move forward. The emotion of it, you just try to play possession-by-possession. I didn't really know we were up 30 points until I was just on the radio show and they said that. How they play is exactly what we saw. They've done that to every team that they've played. Either they're in a flurry the first half that we had to battle off, or it's been a flurry in the second half like we had to face tonight."
On the offensive package he put in on Thursday:
"It's nothing elaborate from a standpoint of spacing, ball and body movement, and making sure our angles were proper. You've seen it here before in different formats called the swing. We're in the very elementary, infancy stages of it. We're nowhere near where we need to be, but again, we showed some good things for only having it for two days and never really running it live against a defense. I thought we did some good things."
Green Bay Head Coach Linc Darner
On his opening statement:
"I thought when we got down 30 (points), the game was probably over. I give our guys a lot of credit. They never quit. They kept battling back, and one thing I talked with them about was about our system and how the game is never over whether we're up 20 or down 20, you can always come back because of the way that we play. I thought our guys did a great job of battling back. The part that killed us in the first half was when we missed 16 straight shots. We got the lead, we were double-teaming Bronson Koenig, and then he got two quick fouls, which kind of hurt us because we weren't prepared for that. I thought our pressure at the beginning bothered them, but then we couldn't score. We went probably 10 or 12 minutes where we didn't score, and we couldn't get up and pressure them even though we thought that one thing we could do was pressure them. We wanted to try to do different things and take different guys away, make different guys try to handle it. There in the last 13 minutes we just kind of went all out. I thought our guys did a good job, and we got some steals and we scored and we were able to get back into it. We got it to a one-possession game, and we were shooting a one-and-one. What more could you ask for with a minute left when we were down 30 with 13 minutes to go."
Players Mentioned
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