Feb. 14, 2004
Cleveland State vs. Illinois-Chicago
February 14, 2004
Post-Game Quotes
Cleveland State Head Coach Mike Garland
On today's game: "Prior to the game today, we discussed in the locker room and at shootaround this morning, it is important to get off to a good start against UIC, in particular after the close call at Youngstown State. Sure enough, we had the window of opportunity there, and we didn't take advantage of it because we were flat on the defensive end. In the second half, why did our shooting pick up, why did we start to score? Because we picked it up on the defensive end. Sometimes we tend to lose ourself in the game, we need to stop thinking about shots and just play, and we'll start making them out of the context of our offense instead of just standing around. They won this game because of their guards and their ability to offensively rebound the ball. That's what we were doing at the beginning of the season, before all the injuries. I give them a lot of credit, they held off our run. They knew we were coming, and they held it off. They had some kids come off the bench today and carry the team. That's what good programs do, they have kids come off the bench and pick up what the starters or front line guys can't get done."
On Omari Westley and Jermaine Robinson: "I thought today, Omari and Jermaine did a good job of letting the offense come to them. I thought they waited some on offense, and once Jermaine got going, he went bang, bang, bang. With everyone in the league trying everything they can to keep them from catching the ball, the other guys have to make some shots. We had some really good shots early on, but we couldn't get them to go down. With us not rebounding offensively the way we can, that hurts. If we miss them, we have got to get them back."
On Pape Badiane: "What I see with him more than anything is getting his timing back. This is the second game in a row where he was right there with the ball around him, and he had no idea. It's like he's lost his feel for the game, and he doesn't have it back just yet."
On playing after Thursday's heartbreaking loss to Butler: " I think we had a little hangover from the Butler game. I tried everything I could to avoid it, but it had an effect on us, and we didn't come right out of the chute tonight."
On media timeouts stalling his team's momentum: "We were rolling, and I spun around and heard a media timeout called. I got a little lost in that, but then right away, I thought maybe this will do us some good. We're limited in who we can play, and were trying to rest some guys. At the one point, we were really rolling, and here comes the media timeout. With my luck this year, if it had been the other way, all of a sudden there wouldn't have been one and I would have been searching for one. If I were you, I wouldn't ride in a car with me, or stand under any trees with me. If you come to my golf outing, don't stand by me if the sun was shining, you might get hit by lightening. But one of these days, I'm going to have a little lightning of my own."
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Cleveland State Forward Pape Badiane
On the losing streak: "It's really been kind of tough, but Coach Garland keeps trying to get us to keep our heads up. "
On recovering from a broken hand: "It's not 100 percent, but I try to do the most that I can. I know that I can bring a lot to the team on the defensive end. Everyone has little injuries, everyone has the same problems, we've just got to try to stick together."
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Cleveland State Forward Omari Westley
On the team's slow start: "We always plan to come out and play hard every game. Coach G told us that if we didn't jump out early, we'd have a hard time winning the game. Unfortunately, they jumped on us before we jumped on them, and you can see the end result."
On not expecting UIC to give up: "When we played them at Chicago, they kept putting it on us, and we didn't expect anything different. We try to win, they try to win, we know they're not going to give up, we expect them to keep coming at us."
On the play of Jermaine Robinson: "Jermaine is our go-to guy. When things are going wrong, he's always the person to make things right. Whether he's diving around for a loose ball or battling for a rebound among the trees, we see what he can do and it makes everyone more aggressive."
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Illinois-Chicago Head Coach Jimmy Collins
On today's game: "I'm glad we brought our A game today, we definitely had to have that today. One good thing about Cleveland State is that they never stopped fighting. I know we were kind of hoping after the first half that they might kind of quit and let us go back to Chicago rested, but they never stopped fighting. I see a lot of guys on the bench in street clothes, I know Badiane is hurt. To give us the effort they gave us, I'm glad we didn't just play the second half, or we would have lost this game. We've been on the road since Wednesday and the guys put forth the particular effort they needed to win this game."
On Cleveland State's fortunes this season: "It seems like every time they start getting things rolling, something else bad happens. A few years ago, we went 7-21, and that wasn't fun. Things are going to get better for him, he has the team fighting hard. Once he gets the players in place, things will get better for him."
On missing Cedrick Banks due to foul trouble: "This is the second or third time that due to foul problems, we've had to move on. Basketball is a game of adjustments. We do have some other good players. We've also been able to make adjustments when we need to, but I'd rather we didn't have to make adjustments without Cedrick Banks."
On his team's play: "We're playing really good ball, perhaps the best we've played all year. About a third of the way in, we had some personal and mental problems we had to work through. The players understand now what we have to do to be successful."
On his team's pregame preparation: "Our pregame speech today was about at some point in time, someone's going to lose to this team. We talked about the law of averages, and it's going to catch up with someone. I'm just glad it didn't happen to us."
