Post-game Quotes
12/30/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 30, 2003
Recap?|? Final Stats
Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo:
Opening Statement: "I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think we have played a lot better basketball in a lot of ways. Coppin State played pretty well. Early, I didn't think we were very sharp, but give (Jimmy) Boykin some credit - he hit some shots in the second half."
"Some of the things that pleased me - I thought Alan Anderson made some great passes, I thought Chris Hill made some great passes. We got to the free throw line, which is something we wanted to do. We attacked the zone pretty well. Kelvin Torbert did a helluva job in the middle of things, at times. We did a lot of pretty good things against a team that I can see now why they took Missouri down to the wire."
"The only disappointing thing was the rebounding. For Jason Andreas to get none and Paul (Davis) to get three, that is inexcusable. Thank God that Chris Hill and Shannon Brown got some rebounds for us. We missed a lot of shots and couldn't get as many offensive boards. But they shot well. They hadn't been shooting well from the line and then they shoot 90 percent. I thought our defense was a lot better. If we would have played that well defensively, I think we would have had a few more wins."
Coppin State Head Coach Ron Mitchell
Opening statement: "It was a tough game. I have to give Michigan State credit. They created the tempo in the second half and they pushed the ball a lot harder in the second half and got a lot of clean looks. And then our fouls got us. We put one of the best free-throw shooting teams in the country on the foul line."
On his team's play in the last five minutes: "We made some turnovers and that created some problems with our spirit and that lowered our intensity level. We have a young team. When you have a young team sometimes they tend to dwell on the problems rather than move forward."
On his team's play overall: "I did think our rebounding was pretty good. We don't have a true rebounder. It's more of a rebound-by-committee. But the big thing is you can't turn the basketball over. We have 11 turnovers in the second half and that's just not good enough."
