March 5, 2005

Recap |  Box Score |  Notes

Head Coach Stan Joplin

"Eastern Michigan just wouldn't go away and they have a very good basketball team that hasn't played to their expectations. Everytime we play them it's been a close ballgame. It was a back-and-forth a lot and we made some plays down the stretch and that was the big thing."

(on Western losing and if he or the players knew the result of the game)

"It just goes to show you how tough it is to win on the road. College basketball is very strange, especially in our conference where there's no clear-cut favorite. I wanted to make sure the players didn't know anything about what was going on. I wanted them to concentrate on Eastern Michigan and that was the most important game for us. We couldn't look ahead and needed to worry about ourselves."

(on getting the No. 2 seed and a bye after getting off to a slow start)

"One of our goals this year was to win the West Division and we accomplished that. Now the next one is to win the MAC Tournament. We played 12 of our first 16 games on the road and it really wasn't very good for the team because we never had any chance to get any confidence. We hung in there and lost a lot of close games and I'm hoping we learned a lot from that."

(on winning two OT games going into the tournament)

"I think we came up with some big plays. I think Keith Triplett came up big again. Hopefully, we can use that to our advantage and the players will feel confident about doing that. It's something that we can build on."

Senior guard Keith Triplett

(on not being able to put EMU away)

"Eastern Michigan always plays us tough. They beat us here the last two seasons and I didn't want to let that happen on my 'Senior Night'."

(on EMU coming back and tying the game twice at the end of regulation and the first overtime)

"In conference games you can be up 20 and end up losing by 20. Anything can happen and you have to play for 40 minutes. You just can't ever let up."

(on being the No. 2 seed in the tournament)

"It feels good and it's my first time ever being the No. 2 seed. It's the easy way because you get to go right to Cleveland."

(on the pressure on the team to win the game)

"There was a lot of pressure. We had to win this game. We had a chance to get in first place a couple times but we lost. We couldn't let that happen today. We were only worried about this game and we didn't want to lose. We didn't find out that Western lost until the end of the game. We went into today's game like we were playing for a championship."

(on having to go into two overtimes)

"We knew we were going to win it someway. We just had to keep playing and put our heads down and keep hustling."

(on playing his last game at Savage Hall and finishing it with a share of the West Division title)

"There was a lot of emotion because since Coach Joplin has been here the seniors have never lost in the final home game. I didn't want to be the only one to lose. Kareem helped me win my last game."

(on making sure the team gives their best effort in Cleveland)

"We just have to go out and play hard. I have to pick my game up because when I play well the team plays well. When I'm down the team is down. I just have to go out and play hard and play my game like I did today. If my shot isn't falling I need to get to the free throw line and keep playing defense."

Sophomore guard Justin Ingram

(on the game being an emotional rollercoaster)

"It seems like we want to do everything the hard way. It's been that way the whole year. We didn't do too well at the start of the season and then we started to get untracked. But then we'd lose a couple of games and that's how it went. We thought we had them put away but they just kept coming back. It was draining but we knew that we couldn't lose this game. We had to do whatever we had to do to find a way to win this game."

(on coming back from a slow start to capture a share of the division title being special)

"We went through a lot this year with people saying we were supposed to be this and that. Then we didn't show anything at the beginning of the year and people said maybe we shouldn't have got all this hype. It kind of hurt our pride and for us to come back and go through everything we went through, and still be where we were supposed to be in the beginning, it makes it that much more special. That's why that much more happier that we did come back and win a share of this championship."

(on winning another OT game and it helping in the MAC Tournament)

"It does help winning this game and the Northern Illinois game in overtime. Both games were tight and it shows us that we can close out a game. It was tough for us at home too and we were able to still win it. It's going to help us a lot when we get on a neutral court when no one has homecourt advantage."