What Mike Woodson Said After Indiana's 85-71 Home Loss Against Penn State

Indiana lost 85-71 Saturday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall against Penn State, which entered the game with a 10-11 record and didn't have its leading scorer, Kanye Clary, on Saturday. Here's the full transcript and video of what Indiana coach Mike Woodson said postgame.

Jack Ankony | Feb 3, 2024

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Indiana Hoosiers

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana suffered a devastating 85-71 loss at home against Penn State Saturday afternoon at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

Penn State (11-11, 5-6) didn't have leading scorer Kanye Clary, but the Nittany Lions torched Indiana's defense with 12-for-22 3-point shooting. The Hoosiers entered the game needing to make a run in the second half of Big Ten play, but this loss diminishes nearly all of their NCAA Tournament hopes as they fall to 13-9 overall and 5-6 in conference play.

Here's the full transcript of Indiana coach Mike Woodson's postgame press conference.

Q: Obviously you guys had a number of issues there. Why do you feel you guys with some regularity struggle with defending the three, other times coming into this building getting, you know, eight, nine, ten -- today 12, made threes against you guys?

Woodson: "Well, in the Big Ten conference we have been guarding the three pretty well. There's an indication we've defended the three pretty well. I just thought tonight, the second half we were so flat coming out, something I hadn't seen. I look at their first possession to start the second half, they got I think three or four cracks at it where we couldn't come up with loose balls, rebounds. It was like we were a step slow, and that's kind of disappointing because you play a good game against Iowa and you come back and basically lay an egg."

Q: Talking about that second half, did you feel like it was maybe a response to their defensive pressure that that sort of 1-2-2-press they were putting in, and speeding you guys up and getting you out of rhythm?

Woodson: "Not really, I thought we handled the press early, built the lead based on them doing the same thing. I think we had 13 turnovers, so that's in the ballpark in terms of where we want to be at 12 or less. So I didn't think the press really hurt us. I thought defensively, our switching and recognizing they run a lot of what we call ghost screens, we just didn't handle them correctly. We weren't up to touch tonight. I thought we had good intentions when we started the game because we came out aggressive and it just kind of wore away."

Q: That effort in the second half, I mean, do you want more fire from your guys in response to that? Who are you looking to? Can you coach them out of that, or is that something that players have to recognize and kind of show up and do it themselves?

Woodson: "Well, sure I want more fire. I mean, come on. Yes I want more fire out of my guys. They didn't fight tonight in the second half, and that's kind of disappointing. We've got to go back to work and see if we can work our way back because that's a game that I thought if we played well we had a legitimate chance to win and I thought we did play well early on and then we just had too much slippage defensively in the second half."

Q: How much of that flatness is just energy and effort and not showing up?

Woodson: "Well, I'm not going to throw my guys under the bus. They just didn't perform in the second half. They didn't. They were flat as hell."

Q: Given what you're saying about the defense, how much thought did you give to going back to kind of a small defensive lineup that's given you success over the last two games?

Woodson: "Well, again we were small at times. When they took their big guy out, we went with one big and we had small guys around him. That wasn't the difference. The difference was we didn't switch correctly. We didn't do a lot of things defensively that got us the lead early. I mean, they didn't do anything differently. We've just got to go better over a 40-minute ballgame."

Q: Have you seen anything that lends your team susceptible to the long runs in the second half that you guys have given up this year?

Woodson: "We've had our ups and our downs this year, no doubt about that. But I look at the points, you gave up 85 points, you're not beating anybody in the Big ten doing that. That's not us, you know what I mean. You have a chance when you're trying to hold teams to 65 under in the Big ten, and when we've done that, we've been pretty successful."

Q: When you look at the offensive rebounds Penn State had or some of the turnovers you had, it feels like at times a waning focus from your squad. What do you feel leads to those moments?

Woodson: "Again, over the course of a game, you have break downs, and I thought tonight, the fact that we were flat, we just didn't have anything going the second half. I mean, they dictated everything from the very beginning and once we fell behind, it was just tough to get back."

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