Jan. 10, 2009

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes

Cleveland State Head Coach Gary Waters:
"I thought we played a tremendous first half and an average second half. We gave up to many points and to many offensive rebounds. They out-toughed us in the second half and we allowed that to happen and it's very disappointing to me."

"I was going to play Josh tonight. It was a feeling that I had. He was making shots in practice and I thought he did a good job in the time he was out there."

"Whenever we get a game like that out of Chris, we usually dominate the game. It gives us another prescence inside and frees up the guards to let them play their game. Our guys did a great job of finding him and he had a great game."

"They sent a statement to us when we go to UIC. They were physical in our house and I have a problem with that. I told them we had to be tougher and we weren't in the second half. It happened our last game against Loyola and also at Detroit. We work to hard on defense to give up second half points and I can't sit and take that and my players know that."

"I thought Norris (Cole) and Chris (Moore) did outstanding jobs guarding their players. Norris played 35 minutes and never got winded. Vandermeer is one of the top offensive rebounders in the country and Chris held him to one. If you take those two out of this game, they are in it. And we hit our free throws down the stretch, which we haven't been doing."

"They controlled the pace in the second half with their zone, but the positive thing is that we hit some shots. We scored 40 points in the second half."

"I'm pleased with where we're at. The kids are playing good basketball and working hard on the defensive end and coming around offensively."

"(Josh) Mayo is a great player. One guy can't stop him. You need an entire team to slow him down."

Cleveland State's Norris Cole:
"I wanted to be disciplined on him (Mayo), chase the screens and make every shot he took a difficult one. I knew my teammates were behind me to help me."

"You try to stay focused on the game and your assignments. You can't get sidetracked.

Cleveland State's Chris Moore:
"My teammates did a really good job of putting me in position to score and tonight the shots were just falling for me."

"I had a mindet coming in the game as a personal challenge. Vandemeer is a solid post player and I tried to stick to the things that coach teaches in practice. I wanted to stick to the gameplan and be disciplined and everything would take care of itself."

UIC Head Coach Jimmy Collins:
"I think it was pretty evident that Cleveland State was the better team tonight. They played harder. They shot better in the second half. We need a win to get to the point that I think this team should be. But they weren't going to let us win tonight. We made some mistakes that could have helped us win or make it closer. Their players are tough, hard-nosed kids and we saw that tonight."

"The team as a whole did a heck of a job (on Josh Mayo)."

"We need to get some more guys developed and willing to get inside."

"We can score points. They are a team that gets after you. There were times I thought they made defensive mistakes, but because of their hustle, they were able to make up for it. Their defense is good or they wouldn't be winning like they have been."

"Man to man, we couldn't stop them from penetrating and kicking. And if they missed that shot because we were scrambling to pick up shooters, they would get the offensive rebound. So we felt that we had to go to a zone. They did a really good job of running their offense so we had to give guys areas inside of guarding people."