Indiana coach Mike Woodson met with the media on Sunday after his Hoosiers beat Harvard 89-76 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Ind. Here's the full video of the press conference, plus the transcript.
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00:00 Whether it's been, you know, some of the stuff off the court before the season or
00:04 maybe just some of his quieter nights offensively, I imagine it's been
00:07 frustrating for McKenzie at times the last few weeks. Just what gets him going
00:11 in a game like this and how important is a game like this just to kind of give
00:14 him that that feeling of 18 points, 8 rebounds, seeing some of that success
00:19 translated in a game? He's a freshman and he's been working and hopefully this
00:27 will be a nice carry over to the next game.
00:31 Yeah, with Xavier going down, how'd that kind of alter
00:39 things for you? And you know you got quality minutes from Anthony off the
00:43 bench. What did you kind of see from the guards when Xavier went down?
00:46 Well again, I mean it's a big loss. I mean Xavier's a big piece to the puzzle, but
00:53 you know my theme has always been his next man up. You know, guys got to stay
00:57 ready to play. Whoever was called upon, you got to step up and play. I mean and I
01:03 thought Anthony came in and gave us some positive minutes and Gabe, you know,
01:07 brought it down the stretch. He brought it home. So I mean, hey, it's
01:12 what it is. You know, I got, hopefully I'll see, you know, once I go in I'll see
01:17 where we are with Xavier because I have no idea at this point, but we're gonna
01:23 need Xavier to be healthy to help us win basketball games.
01:29 What did you like most about what McKenzie did and the different ways that
01:35 he scored tonight? McKenzie just did what he was doing when he first got here. You
01:41 know, he had a game where he figured it out and he's just got to continue to
01:47 grow, continue to work, and then let it just happen.
01:53 Mike, you saw quite a bit more zone today than you have seen. Obviously you fed the
01:59 post successfully, but how did you feel like you were against the zone?
02:04 Well, we scored 50 points in the paint and a lot of that came out of the zone.
02:10 You know, our bigs have worked pretty well together. You know, when teams have
02:14 played some zone against us, you know, but we just got to continue to grow.
02:21 Teams are gonna play zone some and teams are gonna press us some. Teams are gonna
02:25 double the post some. You know, all those things you got to combat it and execute
02:31 and put the ball in the hole. That'll help.
02:38 Mike, with McKenzie having the day that he had today, but how much does that open
02:44 it up for guys like Kalau to have an even bigger day like he did as well and
02:48 opening up the whole game plan for you guys?
02:51 Well, again, you know, we were four for 16 from three, so I don't know how much
02:56 opening that was. We didn't shoot the three ball again that well tonight and
03:02 still put 89 points on the board. I mean, we just, hey, guys got to, we shoot them
03:08 every day and they just got to feel comfortable when they letting it go that
03:12 it's gonna go in. They can't hope it's gonna go in. They just got to make it go in.
03:17 What did you see differently from your defense in the second half? It seemed
03:22 like Harvard hit a lot of threes in the first half and that dropped off in the
03:24 second half.
03:25 Well, a couple of threes were scrambling balls that we didn't come. I was
03:29 disappointed because we never got on the floor for loose balls. We lost four balls
03:34 the first half and that can't happen. And two of those were,
03:40 threes were made behind them and in the other threes that they made, we just
03:44 weren't up to touch. And I thought we did a better job the second half and getting
03:50 up to touch. I think they made one probably the second half, but we were
03:56 better, I think, the second half from a defensive standpoint and guarding the
04:00 three-point line. Coach, just continuing on the defense, do you feel like McKenzie's
04:06 kind of starting to figure things out on that end and where have you seen him
04:10 kind of grow in that area over the first month? He was better tonight.
04:15 Again, guys, he's a freshman and you guys expect so much
04:21 from these young kids. It's a learning process when you come out
04:27 of high school and you go to college and you play college basketball.
04:34 He's got a ways to go, but he's making progress. Tonight was progress and
04:38 you just got to continue to work and you do that, I think good things will happen.
04:46 Mike, you talked about how well Khalil and Malik played against the zone and a
04:50 few weeks ago you mentioned that buddy ball that they play with each other.
04:53 How much does it do for your team when they play together well down low
04:56 in the high-low game? No, it's great. Malik saw a lot of that last
05:03 year with Race and Trace. He hasn't forgotten the few minutes
05:08 he played last year. He was on the tail end of some of that buddy ball with
05:12 Trace or may it be with Race. He and Bigfella, they kind of
05:19 connected now a little bit, which is kind of nice to see, man, especially when
05:26 teams play a zone. We got to be able to make plays inside the zone to
05:30 be competitive. Khalil, 28 points, 12 of 13, found a few different ways to score
05:37 tonight. What did you see from him out there? Well, he made some
05:43 shots that were great basically from Malik. Malik fed him a few
05:51 times. He got a few offensive putbacks, hit a couple of turnaround
05:57 jump shots, made some free throws. He's capable of doing that.
06:04 We just got to keep him in a good place and playing hard.
06:09 I thought in New York in the UConn game he didn't play hard
06:15 enough. I'm not saying that's the reason why we lost, but he just
06:20 didn't play hard enough to me. I thought the Louisville game he came back and
06:24 played a little bit harder, but tonight he played really hard. It was kind of
06:28 nice to see him respond.