Jan. 7, 2010

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes

Cleveland State Head Coach Gary Waters:
"I thought we worked very hard today, it was a hard fought victory. We dodged a bullet even in foul trouble and we were able to come through. When you get outrebounded by 14 and still win that is pretty good."

"I didn't think we did a great job of stopping them inside, but we were also playing most of the second half without Aaron and that caused some problems for us."

"In the first half we let some balls get away from us and we were stuck for a while, we needed our defense to help us out to change that."

"We felt that we could beat Loyola coming into the game, and when we had a 13 point lead we should have extended that but we started to make fouls and got into foul trouble."

"We didn't run our normal press, but we still created the turnovers which was very good for us in today's game. It is very couraging for us to win without Aaron having a major presence on the floor, but we can't do that every game because we need his rebounds."

"We are now understanding what we need to do at the end of the game. We know that you have to execute, make free throws, take care of the basketball and defend. With every game we will better at all of that."

Cleveland State's Norris Cole:
"One of the things we had to do was control the game, and as a point guard I feel that its my job to do that."

"Every conference game is important, especially protecting your home court, every win helps at the end of the year in the tournament."

Cleveland State's Jeremy Montgomery:
"It was great to get the victory over a Chicago team, if I felt a shot during the game I took it and for the most part it worked."

Cleveland State's D'Aundray Brown:
"They told me to be more aggresive on offensive, so if the shot is there then I will take it in order to help my team out."

Loyola Head Coach Jim Whitesell:
"Cleveland State made the plays at the end, we got off to a poor start at the beginning and they just kept coming after us in the second half. We just couldn't finish our plays at the end."

"Part of the problem was their pressure and we just kept turning over the ball. We missed a few free throws at the end and you can't do that in a close game, you just have to make them. We came in knowing that we would have to play hard, and I thought we did, we just didn't execute everything."