Dec. 4, 2008

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes

Cleveland State Head Coach Gary Waters:
"You have to take the good with the bad. We beat ourselves. That was some bad basketball. Down the stretch, there were five plays that were blundered defensively and allowed them to score. We didn't execute down the stretch."

"We made that game harder than it should have been. I don't want to take anything away from them because they played to win the game and they did. But we did some things that are uncharacteristic of our team and we have to get this one back. Because we gave one away today."

"We had a seven point lead that should have been a 15-point lead. We missed layups under the basket and we have to make those layups. I told them at halftime that we let them off the hook. It was a hard fought second half and they hit some three's, but we didn't execute on defense. It was disappointing. We work to hard to let situations like that get away from us."

"There were five possessions that we let them score on down the stretch and that's our defense."

"You can't expect to win a game like this if you miss all those free throws. They eventually catch up to you at the end."

"They were supposed to switch on the second to last three pointer, but they didn't and he was wide open. There were a lot of miscues at the end that we never should have let happen. This is a veteran team. I can make excuses, but we should have won this game."

"This is a major learning experience and I hope we learn some things from this. We can see all the errors we made down the stretch and correct those and we'll be OK."

"It was disappointing we didn't get a victory for the fans because that brings them back, but we'll get it back."

Cleveland State's George Tandy:
"They just out-toughed us and wanted it more down the stretch."

Cleveland State's Cedric Jackson:
"As the point guard, I didn't get the ball to the right guys. I should have taken better control of the situation and getting the ball to the shooters and calming things down during the stretch."

Butler Head Coach Brad Stevens:
"I felt that Cleveland State played better than us and did a great job rebounding the basketball, but we found a way at the end. Guys with the moxie that Zach has, it doesn't surprise me that he made the last shot.

"It was a heck of a pass to Zach and Gordon made the right read and passed it to the right guy."

"It was one of those games. Both teams didn't shoot the ball well and we were fortunate to hit three three's at the end. We found a rhythm and got open on two plays and got three-pointers. It shows the wherewithall of Sean and Zach to step up and hit big shots at key moments."