Post-Game Quotes
3/2/2002 12:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball
March 2, 2002
Head Coach Stan Joplin:
"It wasn't a thing of beauty but it's a win. We're 11-7 in the MAC and the No. 4 seed and I'm really happy with that. I give the players a lot of credit for making progress and winning some games. The last two weeks we've played a lot of games. I knew tonight was going to be a tough game and now we have to put it behind us and get ready for Eastern on Monday."
"We have to play better on Monday. Eastern really shot the ball well and did a nice job. We were careless with the ball and didn't have a good flow on offense, but I think Eastern had a lot to do with that."
"We have to just worry about Monday and somehow get to Cleveland. I think our players might have thought they were already in Cleveland. It makes it tough playing a team whose record is a little bit down and they feel they can just show and play. Our players thought you could just turn it on and you can't do that. That really showed tonight."
Sophomore guard Terry Reynolds:
"We just came out kind of flat, but we picked it up at the end. We need to come out with a lot more energy and urgency at the start of the game."
"You can't really look at a team's record because any team can beat anybody on any given day if you don't come to play. We just have to get focused for Monday, watch the film tomorrow and come out and correct the things we did wrong and play hard the whole game on Monday."
Sophomore forward Ricardo Thomas:
"We didn't really play Toledo basketball early in the game. We didn't play the defense the way we have been the last month and we were stagnant on offense. We tried to rally ourselves at the half after we made our big run at the end of the half."
"Nobody really gave us a chance for the No. 4 seed after the way we started the season. We knew we had something special in our locker room but we hadn't shown it. We took a couple of tough losses on the road early in the season. It might have made us down early, but I knew we would come together as a team for a run in the tournament."
Junior guard Nick Moore:
"We didn't come out ready to play in the first 12 minutes. We didn't guard anybody and they knocked down shots and we didn't do a good job. Our intensity picked up for us and we realized we had dug ourselves a little hole. We had to stop somebody and we did."
EMU Head Coach Jim Boone:
"I give Toledo a lot of credit for making the plays when they needed to put themselves in a position to win. Both teams played hard and battled down to the end."
"We feel fortunate to come back here on Monday and hopefully we can hang in there and keep it close. Toledo is good and a lot better basketball team than we are."
