They've been a thorn in our side, but we're playing for more than just revenge. We're coming out and playing for the Big Ten tournament championship. If we beat them, that'll be great. |
This game is very important, not just for me, but for the team because they beat us twice. Tomorrow is going to be a fight. |
We came out with the 'W' in a very physical game. Nobody is safe in this league. You've got to bring your 'A' game every night. You've got to be ready to fight. When you're aggressive and unselfish, you can accomplish a lot. |
We didn't come out here tonight like a football team on the upswing. We should be executing better on offense. I'm disappointed in the way we played but I am proud of these guys for fighting through adversity and coming back to get the win. |
We didn't do the things we wanted to do in the regular season. So the slate is clean. |
We didn't do what we had to do to get the job done. They did. |
We executed badly with no offense. |
We haven't played Spartan basketball that often this year, but it's a new season. This is a very important game for us [against Illinois]. We're going to have to play a lot better if we're going to win. |
We just had to match his intensity and bring a little more than he had. As much as we had to chase him off screens, he had to run off them, so he was getting tired. Our big men did a good job bumping him when he was trying to curl off them, and it was just a team effort. |
We kept our composure. We messed up some stuff but we played through it. |
We knew we didn't have to limit just Dee, we had to limit everyone. |
We like to run. They did a good job putting on the pressure, but we didn't take care of the ball. We've got a lot of stuff to get better at. |
We wanted to match his intensity and bring a little more intensity. As much as we chase him when he runs the offense, he has to run. And our big guys did a good job of bumping him. |
We're always talking about the Big Ten title. We're going to try to bring it back. It would be very special to do that with what I think is the toughest schedule in history. |
When it comes to basketball, it's not that hard. You gotta go out and play like you gotta play and listen to the coaching staff. You just have to go out and play hard, and we call that Spartan basketball. |