Wisconsin Head Coach Greg Gard
Opening Statement

Happy for our guys. I thought we did some terrific things, specifically defensively and hopefully that’s a sign of more things to come as they grow and develop an identity on the defensive end. As we’ve always talked about, that’s what we have to continue to rely upon when the ball doesn’t go in at the rate that we’d like to have it go in, but just happy for our players, and look forward to enjoying this one here tonight and preparing for Oklahoma tomorrow.

On what a team performance like this one does for his team

You talk about these things all the time, but when you have a game play out this way, it cements the belief in how we’re doing things, and allows their confidence. Everyone talks about confidence on an offensive end, making shots, those types of things, being in a rhythm offensively. And the synergy that comes with playing together as an offensive team. But that can be flipped to the other end of the floor too. The confidence to know that we can rely on our defense, and we’re going to have to. That’s always been a staple of this program and now having a more mature group, they understand, as Nate [Reuvers] mentioned, covering up. Defense is about multiple efforts. You can make mistakes, but with second and third efforts, you can make up and clean up those mistakes. We were able to do that pretty well tonight.

On the play of Nate Reuvers

He understands, I think as I mentioned a year ago, he understands our concepts with how we want, or picked up the concepts of guarding ball screens pretty well for as young as he was, or is. And I thought he did a pretty good job, he really escalated in terms of his growth defensively a year ago and now he’s more physical, he’s heavier, that’s all been written about and talked about, but he’s got a good feel. In order to be a shot blocker, it’s one thing to be able to go off the floor, but you have to understand -- more -- timing, when to and when not to and he’s long. He’s 6-11. When he uses his wings, so to speak, he really can alter shots. It’s not all the time, but that’s a heck of an eraser back there, that can cover up for maybe mistakes or trying to run guys off the thee-point line and we have somebody like that sitting behind us. It just gives you more confidence in your defense. But again, we don’t want to rely on it. But if we do have to use it as a secondary rescue option, so to speak, as he comes to the rescue behind us, he’s getting better and better at it.

Wisconsin Graduate Student Forward Ethan Happ
On his team’s defensive play

It’s something we’ve been stressing way back in the summer. We need to have an identity to be a great defensive team. Coach says it all the time to us that some nights it’s not going to fall and we need to hang our hat on our defense and that’s promising that we were able to do that today.

On his team responding after Stanford cut the lead down in the second half

I think that last year, there would’ve been some guys, and collectively as a group, where we might not as handled it as well as we have this year, and that’s just another year of experience, and belief that we can get stops and we’re going to get buckets eventually. It’s a belief in our defense and that we can be the better team at the end of the game.

Wisconsin Sophomore Forward Nate Reuvers

On his tournament record-breaking, 9 block performance vs. Stanford

Before the game, Coach was talking about, that if a guy has a mistake on defense that we need to cover for each other, so when they’re driving down the lane, I was just coming over, helping my guys out…they were coming, I was weak side a lot of times, and I was just coming over and they were just shooting the layup and I was going and getting it.

Stanford Head Coach Jerod Haase

Opening Statement

We have to have a short memory, and we’ll review some of this game tonight when we meet and be ready to turnaround quickly. It’s one of the challenges and also one of the fun parts about tournament formats like this is that we have the ability to move on and challenge ourselves again tomorrow, which will obviously be a tremendous challenge.

On Wisconsin’s defense

They do a nice job of packing it in. They did a nice job being physical on our drives. When we did get to the paint I would say there were a variety of times where we shot challenged shots when we didn’t have to. At the end of the day, I thought we took a step forward. We’re starting to make more plays for others but it doesn’t reflect that in the stat sheet when you don’t see the ball go through the basket. But they are a wellcoached team. They protect the paint really well and they certainly play hard.

On his team’s effort

I thought our guys really competed. We knew the game was going to be a grind from beginning to end, whether the shots were going in or not, and it was, and I was proud. I thought, the first four minutes, we kind of took the first punch of the game and then we joined the fight, and I thought the guys really competed. To be honest with you, I was really proud of a lot of things that they did. Certainly, a lot of room for improvement, certainly a high ceiling for this team, a need for us to get better and improve. But having said that I’m confident that we will.

Sophomore Forward Daejon Davis

On Wisconsin’s defense holding Stanford to 27.1% shooting percentage I don’t think they were causing us problems. I think we missed a lot of shots we usually make. On the shift in officiating during the second half We can’t worry about officiating. Our job is to play as hard as we can. That’s just something we can’t control.

We were taught to play defense the way we play defense.

On falling short after cutting the Wisconsin lead to two points in the second half They went on a run. We couldn’t make shots…27% (field goal percentage)…That’s not us.

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