Marquette University Athletics
Men's Basketball Postgame Quotes
11/8/1999 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 8, 1999
John Cliff
"It's a great feeling. We wanted to go out and play a good game and prove that we are a good team."
"Early on, we knew the mistakes we were making and also knew that we weren't playing as hard as we were capable of. We weren't doing the things we do in practice, we know that what we do there has to carry over into the games. At halftime, we knew what we had to do and we tried to accomplish that while chipping away at their lead (Marquette trailed, 48-40, at halftime)."
Oluoma Nnamaka
(On his winning bucket with 2.6 seconds left) -- "Everyone is an option but I saw they were double-teaming (Brian) Wardle so they threw it to John Kyle (Mueller) and I tried to post. He got it to me. We had to adjust to what they were doing in that situation."
(On What Marquette got out the game) -- "We were getting tired of playing against each other everyday in practice. It's good to get the games started and it's good way to get things started off."
(On physical play underneath the basket) -- "I really didn't notice it. It was nothing like practice."
John Mueller
(On California All-Stars 9-of-13 three-point shooting at one point in the first half) -- "We don't want to give up three-point shots at all. We want to have a hand in everybody's face on every shot. Unfortunately, some of their shots were wide open three-pointers. We weren't getting there."
Head Coach Tom Crean
Sorry that I'm late, but I tried to get the NCAA on the phone and get this game petitioned so we could count it as a win.
Seriously, I think the way we came out and played the second half, the aggressiveness that we had, and the way we were able to do a much better job on their personnel, especially against Mack Tuck, is really a tribute to the players. We talked before the game about wanting to establish an identity and if we've spent as much time on defense and rebounding as we done in practice, then it's imperative that we come out and show that. I don't think that we did a very good job of that in the first half but I thought, as a credit to our players, that they were resilient and came back and did a much better job in the second half.
I thought that we got some quality minutes out of some people. Anytime you are in a first-game situation, you are going to have a certain amount of fatigue that is going to kick in and I think it did. But the thing that I'm most proud of is that some people who played quite a bit were in there at the end of the game trying to make some things happen.
It was a five-man effort at the end of the game. The play was designed to create a couple of different things. Our first option wasn't there and they just played basketball at the end and it worked out great. It's a credit to all five of them on the floor because they tried to make the game come to life for them and finish it off the right way. I don't remember who set the screen to free Nnamaka inside, I'll have to watch the film, but it was a great way to end it.
Our guys have worked extremely hard to get to this point. And as we have told them, we'll be right back in the gym tomorrow at 12:15 dissecting everything and trying to continue to make this a daily process of getting better.
