Here's What Purdue Players Said Following the Team'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, players Jaden Ivey, Zach Edey and Sasha Stefanovic 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:
Q. For Sasha, given all the upsets yesterday and also your own experience last year, did that play into your readiness for today?
STEFANOVIC: Yeah, absolutely. I think we make a point, everybody's earned the right to be in this tournament, everybody's really talented and tough and they're hard to play against. Like Coach said, we really prepared. We had a lot of respect for those guys. They have a lot of great individual players and I thought we did a good job just being ready to go from the jump and I thought we had a good start. Jaden played really well. We got some good contribution from everybody and it propelled us forward. Overall, I thought it was a great team win.
Q. Sasha, first for you, you enjoyed those two threes you hit. How badly did you want that, did you need that?
STEFANOVIC: Yeah, definitely. It's probably the biggest job on my team, is to make and take open shots and open threes. Obviously I've been in a little bit of a slump lately with my shooting, but yeah, I'm going to continue to shoot. If I go over a hundred, I'm still going to shoot them up. It's good to see them finally go in, but I wish some of them also went in there early in the first half as well. It is what it is. You've just got to move forward.
Q. Jaden, in the first half, I think you had 18 points in like five shots or something, you had some free throws in there. How good -- how much were you feeling it? How good was that half for you?
IVEY: I felt good just going out there. You know, all of our guys, we feel like we all had energy. I feel like we all felt the feeling of losing last year first round, so I felt like all our guys were motivated and so was I.
Q. Zach, just to close the first half, how important was that to play pretty well in the first half, but also for you personally to play pretty well and make sure you guys had a pretty robust lead at halftime?
EDEY: It was important. Obviously you want to have the momentum going into halftime, you want to feel good going into the locker room and you want to extend the lead as much as possible to get your breath fully. But it was good. I feel like last year I really struggled in my -- in the tournament game, so to come out this year and kind of prove it to myself that I can still do it in the tournament was big for me.
Q. You particularly played well with Sasha as a two-man game, three-man lineups. What does he do well when he isn't shooting the ball well?
EDEY: He gives me the ball. (Laughs.) It's pretty simple, but he gives me the ball, he allows me to play, he gives me my ball in my spots. They can't double off him because he can shoot it, obviously. so it gives me some more space. He's just really good at post feeds.
Q. For any of you guys, Azar had his structure early in the game when he made his first field goals. Talk about the adjustments you were able to make in wearing him down in the waning portions of the game.
STEFANOVIC: We drew more attention to him. I thought we did a good job of jumping to the ball whenever somebody passed to him and we did a good job of corralling him and ball screens and dribble handoffs and everything like that. He's a great player, so he's going to make and take tough shots. But I thought Eric did a great job of just taking up his space and making the whole game difficult on him and trying to make him make difficult shots. He got off a little bit early, but I thought we adjusted and did well.
Q. Zach, you feel like you had a little bit more room to move inside today and how much did that kind of make you feel comfortable down there?
EDEY: Yeah, they obviously sent a double early. They were pretty good at that. But one thing Coach Painter always talks about is like a lot of times when you don't work on a double, you're not really good in rotation, so they gave up some easy looks like Caleb's dunk, a few open entry passes to get the double. So it wasn't like I had a lot of space down there.
On the rebounds, I felt like I kind of did it over them, make sure they keep it off the glass physically. But yeah, it wasn't anything like revolutionary, just rebound the ball, square the ball when I'm open, pass it when I'm doubled.
Q. Sasha, when your offense is humming like it was for most of the afternoon and frankly most of the season, what are some of the qualities, the things that you guys are doing well that allow that?
STEFANOVIC: Yeah. I think from an execution standpoint, we do everything that we want to do. We really cut hard, we can set screens, start our plays in the right spots, and we don't turn the ball over I think is kind of the main thing that when we're doing all those things, our offense is as efficient as they come. Obviously we're one of the best in the nation at that, but just all those little things that go into an offense and the details of it, I think we're really good at and we just need to make sure that that's a focus for us moving forward.
Q. Jaden, where did your shooting rhythm come from to start the game? And also, those balls look different. Do they feel the same?
IVEY: Well, it's just my confidence for real. I'm willing to take any shot if it's the right shot for me and for my team, and yet I think the balls are kind of weird, but you've got to shoot it.
MODERATOR: We're going to try to take a question from zoom.
Q. On the broadcast they showed your mom in the crowd. I was just wondering how nice it is to have your mom there for games this week.
EDEY: Yeah, it's huge. She's obviously been supporting all season. She came down, she rented an AirBNB since Christmas. She came down from Indiana. Always there to cheer me on, sending me texts before the game, sending me texts after. Probably go see her pretty soon. It's cool to have a slice of home even when I'm out here in America still.
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 MATT PAINTER SAID: Purdue basketball defeated Yale 78-56 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Here's everything coach Matt Painter 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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D.J. Fezler is a staff writer for BoilermakersCountry.com. Hailing from The Region, he is from Cedar Lake in Northwest Indiana and has spent the last two years covering Purdue football and basketball.