Here's What Coach Matt Painter Said After Purdue's NCAA Tournament Win Over Yale
MILWAUKEE — No. 3 seed Purdue basketball took down Yale 78-56 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday inside the Fiserv Forum arena. The team moves on to the second round and will tip off again on Sunday.
Following the victory, coach Matt Painter met with the media to discuss the game and what comes next for the Boilermakers.
Here's the full transcript from Friday's postgame press conference:
Opening Statement
PAINTER: Yeah, obviously I thought our guys did a good job start of the second half getting off to a good start. Any time you have a significant lead in this tournament, things can turn pretty sour pretty quickly, and they made some plays to start the second half. We were able to answer and be able to push it out. I thought that was the key to the game right there, just keeping things simple, taking care of the basketball and getting quality shots each time down. Then as the second half progressed, thought our guys did a much better job of challenging them at the rim and the paint when the ball got in there in the first half. They scored in and around the basketball a couple times and I think we did a great job challenging. And I just thought it was a good team within for our guys.
We had the opportunity to play a lot of people and get out there and get some experience and getting into this tournament. Yale is a very good team. Obviously they struggled shooting the basketball, and we wanted to give a lot of time and effort into Swain because we knew that he was dangerous and a guy that could get 30. I thought Eric Hunter did a good job on him, but I thought our whole team did a good job on him. Pleased with our effort and we'll see who we play here next game.
Q. When you get Sasha's threes going and then what you got from Caleb Furst tonight, how important was it maybe to get a couple of those guys going as you start to make your run here in the tournament?
PAINTER: I thought Sasha had some really good looks in the first half that didn't go down. It was good to see him knock a couple of those shots down just to build his confidence. He mentioned that he's been struggling a little bit and that happens with guys that can shoot. You're going to have a period of time during the season where you go through a little bit of struggles and you've just got to keep working your way through it and keep taking good shots and that's what he did.
It was good to see Caleb. Caleb hasn't played in some games because of matchups and we'll continue to go down that road just trying to -- when you have 10 guys you feel good about, sometimes later in the year you get to an 8 or 9-man rotation and it leaves a guy out. A lot of times each individual guy looks at it like what did I do wrong, when in reality you're just playing somebody else because they match up better against that particular opponent. I thought Caleb was active, he was around the basketball, made his free throws and That's what we need. When he comes in there, he's got to play off of those guys and be able to make plays and rebound, and I thought he did that tonight.
Q. I think they went scoreless for almost nine minutes in the second half. What went into the defensive effort today overall and how important was it to have that in your first game in the tournament?
PAINTER: Well, we wanted to really make it hard for Swain. That was our No. 1 thing is not to let him get threes, to take up his space. He got going early in the game and then after that we did a much better job on him. Then they were finishing around the rim and caught a couple runners in that first half. In the second half I thought we did a much better job. Even the ball was still getting in there, it just seemed like they were missing a lot of runners, post-ups, in between, those intermediate shots. I thought our guys did a good job of just contesting and staying with it and not allowing them to get second chance opportunities.
Q. You have two of the more interesting players in the tournament in terms of matchup problems with Zach and Jaden, Zach's size and Jaden's speed. How much of advantage do you think that is with a relatively short turnaround for preparing for those guys which are obviously really difficult to prepare for in general?
PAINTER: I think it's an advantage, but I think other teams have advantages, too. The short prep, I think, can help you, but it also can hurt you, depending on who we play here. I think both teams can have an advantage against us, but we also have an advantage. We always talk about that, like if you kind of attack us a certain way, we've got to do everything in our power to stop you from attacking us in that way, but then we can also flip it. Like don't get down on ourselves, like this is over, flip it on the other end. so If they're putting quicker, smaller guys on Zach and they're driving him, they still have to defend him at the other end. So you don't want to trade baskets obviously, but if you're getting into the bonus and you're getting a lot of fouls, you'll give up a basket here and there against that, especially when you got a guy like Jaden Ivey who's getting by people. Both of those guys, they got fouled seven times, both of them, today and so that's great. That's what we want. We want to create space for both of those guys so they can play, but when people take up that, you've got to get the ball out of your hands to get people in rotation. That's so important for us. When we do that, we're pretty efficient. When we don't, that's how we bog down.
Q. How much time, if any, did you spend addressing last year as in the lead-up to this game?
PAINTER: We talked about it. Obviously we talked about it at the beginning of the season, just the little things and the mistakes we made in that game and how things come down to whether you're considered a winner or loser over one possession or one play. You see that in this tournament a lot. But leading up to it, when we found out who we're playing, just how they've -- they've earned their way here. Like everybody in this tournament have earned their way here and they can beat anybody and you've got to be ready.
But we talked about North Texas and we talked how North Texas outplayed us more than anything. They have good players, they have a good coach and you have to be prepared. I thought we did some good things against them also. Sometimes when you lose, you look at it like it's a total negative and it wasn't. We got into overtime in that game and they played better than us.
But yeah, we used it, we talked about it, but when we played North Texas, we talked about getting beat by Arkansas Little Rock six years before that and that didn't help. All those guys that I just mentioned right there, Grant McCasland, Chris Beard, they're all great coaches, they have great players and it's what March Madness is about. You've got to go out there and play better than the people in front of you, and today we were able to do that.
Stories Related to Purdue Basketball
- PURDUE STEAMROLLS YALE, 78-56: Purdue basketball got past Yale on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, led by Jaden Ivey's game-high 22 points. Zach Edey scored 16 points while Caleb Furst also added 10 off the bench. CLICK HERE
- WHAT THE PLAYERS SAID: Purdue basketball defeated Yale 78-56 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Here's everything players Jaden Ivey, Zach Edey and Sasha Stefanovic had to say during the postgame press conference following the victory. CLICK HERE
- PURDUE, YALE LIVE BLOG: Purdue basketball tipped off against Yale in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday inside the Fiserv Forum. CLICK HERE
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