Northwestern coach Chris Collins postgame

What Northwestern coach Chris Collins had to say after the Wildcats' win over the Indiana Hoosiers

Transcript

00:00 >> Matthew Nicholson, we'll start with an open stand, coach,

00:02 then we'll take questions for everybody.

00:04 >> Well, needless to say, this was a huge, huge win for our team.

00:08 We've gone through a lot of adversity over the past week and a half.

00:13 And to be able to come here on short rest against a team that we

00:22 really respect their talent and their coaching.

00:25 You're on the road, one of the tougher venues to play in.

00:28 And they've been sitting around all, they've had eight days off to prepare for us.

00:31 We were out at the East Coast, had a real dogfight in the game,

00:34 the Rutgers Thursday night.

00:36 We had really minimal prep for this game.

00:38 Just a testament to these guys will, man.

00:40 And we had a lineup on the floor maybe the last eight to ten minutes of

00:44 the first half that I never in my wildest imaginations thought that would be on

00:49 the floor at Indiana in a late season game that we needed to win.

00:53 But credit to those guys, man, when Boo and Brooks were in foul trouble.

00:57 Ryan was in there with Matt, we had Nick and Blake Smith and Justin Mullins.

01:01 I thought that stretch of the game for us to go to half up eight was a huge stretch

01:06 of the game and then I thought we played really well in the second half,

01:09 got the lead to 16.

01:11 And then give Indiana credit, they scattered the game a little bit.

01:14 We made some mistakes, we missed a couple layups.

01:16 They hit a couple threes.

01:17 Now all of a sudden you're in a game and the crowd's in it,

01:19 which makes the game pressure really big.

01:22 This guy stepped up, I think made six big free throws.

01:24 Boo made four out of six and obviously Brooks, they cut it to three.

01:29 It's a lot of game pressure, you gotta go up and at least hit one.

01:31 And that was a big free throw to seal the game.

01:33 So a huge win for us, really proud of these guys.

01:37 Road wins are precious in this league.

01:39 Guys, it's crazy in the Big Ten this year.

01:41 I think they just said on the radio there's only been like 30 wins on the road

01:47 out of over 100 games, which is crazy how hard it is to win on the road.

01:51 And we're gonna cherish this one.

01:53 We're going to get ourselves rested up and get all.