Post-Game Quotes
2/14/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 14, 2004
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Minnesota vs. Michigan State
February 14, 2004
Coaches Quotes
Minnesota Head Coach Dan Monson "We started both halves a little bit tentative and you have to be more aggressive than Michigan State if you are going to come in here and win. You have to go for 40 minutes. I thought we were really more aggressive the first 17-18 minutes of the first half but they came out again and gave us another blow to start the second half. We got a little bit back on track, but not aggressive enough to move the ball and get the shots that we needed in the second half. We didn't have a field goal forever at the end. We put so much on our defense. I thought defensively we played pretty well the whole game, except coming out and the beginning of the first and second halves."
"They are a good team and it's tough in here and, again, we just didn't get it done and they did."
Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo
"Well, if I were Dan Monson, I would be upset. Both of the times that we have played his team, most of the team has outplayed us. That effort in the first half was as good an effort as we have fought against this year. In every way, shape and form, (Minnesota) just seemed to want it a little bit more. They played a lot harder and I thought we did a decent job defending in the first half, believe it or not, except for the slips. The turnovers that they caused, that we made gave them 20 points in the first half and two in the second. In the second, I thought that our defense was much improved, but more so because we did not turn the ball over. We are in this mode where we have to keep winning, find a way. That is the way we did it today, we found a way."
"Minnesota has gotten better. It is a shame that they lost some of those first games because that is a team that played awfully well and awfully hard. That is hard to get a team to do when they aren't winning as many games."
"I was pleased with Kelvin Torbert and I thought that he did some good things for us. We asked him to get on the boards and he did a good job rebounding. As for Shannon (Brown) and Maurice Ager, I thought that we got a lot more out of our wings today."