Jan. 16, 2006

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes

Post Game Quotes

Cleveland State Head Coach Mike Garland: "I thought it came down to that first half stretch where we went 10 or 12 minutes without a basket. We've been able to win a couple of games here shooting in the 30's and you just can't continue to do that. The minute we start putting the ball in the basket, this game is going to become a lot easier for us."

"I thought that we had the defensive effort here tonight to win this ballgame. They are a team that is accustomed to scoring a lot of points, and we did a great job of keeping them from scoring those wide-open three point shots and I thought that had an effect on them."

"Our offense has to come along. We got the ball to the guys that we wanted to get it to, but they have to make some buckets. That's it in a nutshell. We have got to score some baskets."

"All in all, I'm really proud of our kids because our team is getting better. I know it sounds crazy. Defensively, we're alley cats. Our rebounding has come back to us. People aren't scoring field goals on us. We just have to score some points ourselves."

Cleveland State center Ije Nwankwo: "We came out and we were shooting really well to start the game. I don't think they necessarily shut us down. I just think that we kind of panicked a little bit. We had some turnovers and we just didn't execute the way we had practiced."

"We came out and made a few runs in the second half. That little stretch in the first where we went without scoring, they didn't score that much either but we didn't score at all. We kept trying to claw back but we just couldn't get back."

"We didn't execute the way our coaches told us to do in the zone. Our alignment was off and we threw bad passes. We didn't try to penetrate the zone. We just made mental mistakes."

Akron Head Coach Keith Dambrot: "This was a physical game. We had a rough start and then we had them on the ropes and we didn't finish them off. But they are physical. We had them down 15 or 16 and they kept around. We just didn't do a very good job of just finishing the job."

"I told our guys that these are NCAA Tournament and NIT-type games. You have to show that you can win on the road in order to get the bids. You have no chance if you don't win on the road. You have to show that you can beat teams on the road. It really doesn't matter who you beat, but you can't be a losing-record team on the road and get into anything."

"We held them to the same amount of points for a long time. If we could have scored then, we could have buried them. But we never scored. But I guess the same thing could be said about them. They could have buried us because we didn't score either."