Nov. 15, 2007
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Stanford head coach Trent Johnson
On how this game helped Stanford...
"Any time you have the opportunity to play three games at home with an experienced group or a young group I think it helps you. So I think this was a big advantage. I think this is going to be a good basketball team, granted Kevin Coble's not playing, and he hurt us last year at our place. When they get him back they got the chance to get better as the year goes on. I was in that situating last year; the same situation that Bill (Carmody) is in, he has an inexperienced group, a young group and they're going to get better."
On Northwestern's Michael Thompson...
"I think he did a really good job. He had some huge threes for them down the stretch and we had a hard time of keeping him out of the lane from a penetration standpoint. So again, considering the fact that this was his first collegiate basketball game, I thought he did a really good job."
On Stanford's Robin Lopez...
"I like to see him be consistent from start to finish. Four games into this year, he's done a really good job of controlling his temper and playing with confidence. He's a very emotional young man and he has a tendency when things don't go his way to lose focus on what to do, so for the most part, this year he's done a good job of being consistent from start to finish. We need him to stay out of foul trouble, we need him to rebound, and we need him to not bring the ball down on the offense in the post. We need him to keep the ball up high and let the game come to him."
On why Stanford won...
"I think it's a combination of having more size, bigger and stronger. This is a junior, senior, sophomore team and for the most part we don't talk about blocked shots, we talk about good team defense, rotating over, helping your teammate, challenging shooters, and we, personally, and these guys will say this, we're more excited about a charge than a blocked shot."
Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody
Opening statement
"I told our guys before the game at shootaround today that this is our home court and we should win these kinds of games. Twentieth or 21st in the country, it really shouldn't matter because this is your home court. They killed us off the backboards. I sort of expected that, I wasn't hoping for it, but I expected it. I thought that our defense wasn't that bad. The guys were scrapping. Basically, in the second half, I was just going with five guards. Ryan actually played guard a lot last year but I wasn't getting anything out of Mike Capocci, who's a freshman. That didn't surprise me. He played 15 minutes with five fouls and four turnovers. That's going to happen. I think he's a good guy and we'll be able to get the ball inside to him and that will be good. Nikola [Baran] just seemed a little too intent on getting some shots. And then when [Robin] Lopez blocked a shot early, he kept trying to go in there. [Lopez] is a pretty athletic kid and he covers quickly and he blocked three or four of them. Still I liked the way our guys came back. I think we tied at 44, but then quickly they hit a three and a two and then they were up five and we just couldn't quite do it. There were some positives. You're playing a veteran team that was an NCAA tournament team last year, but some of our veterans didn't come through and play the way I thought they should. The guy that I thought played very well was Mike Thompson. In the first half, he was running the team a little bit and was content to do that. In the second half, he came alive and I think I'm going to have to put the ball in his hands a little more and let him make some plays. This democracy of spreading the ball around, we might have to throw that out the window because this guy, he's played a couple of games, an exhibition game and tonight. He doesn't turn the ball over. He's throwing nice passes. He knows what he's doing. So that's where we are. It's a good team. I wish we were able to get it down to the last couple of minutes to see how we would respond, but that's where we are."
On giving Michael Thompson more plays in the Princeton offense...
"My assistant coach, Mitch Henderson, mentioned that. We did a lot more with ball screens and giving Thompson the ball and made plays. For a little guy, he finishes pretty well. At the end, they blocked a shot or two but those were basically forced shots. We could do some things that could help him. I don't want him to be content to just run things. That has to come from me and that's what I told him."
On Stanford's runs in the second half...
"That stretch in the last four minutes and the first five minutes of the second half, or maybe it was more than that. It seemed like 10 or 12 minutes to me. They just took over. They came right out of the half and did something. At the end of the half, we just weren't playing well. We had a little bit of a lead there and we just seemed to stagnate."
On keeping the game close...
"It might have been a game for 30 odd minutes, but it should be a game for 37 minutes. Then you come down and then you can do certain things. But I don't think we ever got them really nervous. It's a veteran team. I thought their guard did a nice job controlling things and making big plays."