The Hoosiers’ head coach address the media postgame.
Indiana men’s basketball head coach Mike Woodson addressed the media following the Hoosiers’ loss to Maryland at home on Sunday.
Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Mike, just as much as you can, what were you looking for on that last pair of inbounds and what broke down? I know the first one Malik gets the ball poked away.
WOODSON: They went to zone, and when we went underneath out of bounds, we had a play for Myles to come off because we knew they would switch to big, and he didn’t. He never came off.
That being said, we had our opportunities. We had a foul to give, which we talked about in the timeout, and didn’t give it. So that was huge.
You’ve got to make plays down the stretch, and I got to get them to understand that. We missed a big front end of a one-and-one that could have put us back up three or four. It was just the little things that we didn’t execute coming down the homestretch.
Q: Coach, giving up 78 at home, just your level of concern or your thoughts on just giving up that many points in a home game?
WOODSON: Well, it was that type of game. They’re a good offensive team, and I thought we did everything we were supposed to do to get back in the game, and we just didn’t finish.
With the foul to give and not give it, it’s unacceptable, but you can’t go back and get it now.
Q: Just big picture with this, you obviously have to swallow this tough loss. A game that ends like that, is that harder to swallow than others?
WOODSON: No, any time you lose, it’s tough to swallow. I don’t like to lose at all. It’s just my makeup.
I know those guys in the locker room, I love them to death, and they don’t like losing. Again, I’ve just got to help them more. That’s what I’ve got to do.
Q: When you start naming just the long list of things that went wrong late. I think you had three seniors out there. I’m sure you guys practiced that a lot. How surprised are you the execution kind of stumbled?
WOODSON: I’m not going to say — we executed to get back into the game. We’re on the free-throw line with the one-and-one, up two with, I think, 20-something seconds on the clock.
Then we just didn’t get a key stop with a foul to give. The ball scrambled out. The initial thrust of their offense, I thought we played it well. Then when the ball kind of spurted around, we just didn’t get up and take the foul like we should have.
Q: You’ve mentioned kind of multiple times, even the last couple weeks, about trying to get this team to play more consistently. Is there anything that you’ve done to try to change it up to try to reach them or try to change your approach when things are a struggle?
WOODSON: Today getting Malik back was a plus. He missed six games, guys, and I’m not using that as an excuse. We went 4-2 in that stretch with three games on the road going 2-1. He’s lost a lot of his conditioning.
Make no mistake about it, when you play on teams like Maryland and Purdue teams that got bigs, you’ve got to play big.
I thought with Goode coming in off the bench tonight, he played his butt off and made plays, but Derik Queen matching up with Goode is not a good match.
I thought Malik came on at the end and showed some fight, considering he hadn’t played a whole lot here as of late. So we’ve got to get him back in better condition. He played 20-something minutes tonight. See if he can help us finish this ten-game run.
Q: On the last inbounds, you swapped out Mackenzie and Goode for Leal and Ballo. Was there something you saw in what Maryland’s set was to do that? Also, was there off the timeout something you didn’t see that caused you to not put them in at that point?
WOODSON: Well, they went zone on our initial last timeout. Malik tried to make the play on the baseline, anything to get a foul. Derik made a good play on the ball to knock it out of bounds.
But the play that we had coming underneath, we just didn’t execute. Myles didn’t come off, and he stayed there in the corner, and we didn’t get much out of it.
Q: Now the second straight game that your opponent has gone hot from three-point range in the second half. What do you think that is a by-product of?
WOODSON: Again, if guys are shooting — a couple times we lost guys, but there were a few times that we were right there. Obviously you’re not close enough if guys can just turn and shoot in your face and make them.
We’ve just got to get better in that area and guarding the 3 ball. Early on, we were pretty good in that area, and we had some slippage there as well.
Q: You guys were up five with three minutes to go. It seemed like the next few possessions got really late into the shot clock and didn’t end up in good looks. Did you get what you wanted out of those? Were you trying to work clock?
WOODSON: No, I wasn’t really trying to work clock. I thought Malik rushed a little push shot that he had right there in the lane, kind of a little chippy the few that he had just made. I thought we executed okay and got some good shots, but you’ve still got to defend on the other end.
I thought we gave up an easy layup to Reese, and I know Malik didn’t want to foul out and I get that. But we can’t give up layups, especially in short clock situation. I mean, they got that early in the clock, so they didn’t have to milk any of the time off the clock.
Hey, it’s a tough game. We’ve just got to bounce back.