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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Dan Dakich Press Conference Quotes
January 09, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 9, 2006
BGSU coach Dan Dakich
On the loss at Western
"I am not totally convinced you practice like you play, but you play as your mentality is in practice a lot of the time. When we don't play a certain way, we get pounded. Last year's team dug in when thing were not going its way, this year we seem to hang our head."
"W played defense for the first five minutes and gave up four points. At the timeout all I am talking about is it's a 40 minute game, you got to stay with the defense, we are a defensive-minded team. Now give Western credit, they banged down some shots they hadn't all year, but no team shoots 28% all year, so they are going to shoot the ball at some point and they certainly did."
On Northern Illinois
Northern is a team that has everybody back. They are a team that has played without their leading scorer, McKinney, and beat Buffalo and beat Toledo at Toledo. They are experienced, they know one another and they help each constantly on the floor. They find one another with the ball and they shoot the ball exceptionally well. One of the keys here will be that we foul and they shoot 70-plus percent from the foul line. The quicker we put them in the bonus, the worse it's going to be for us. They do a good job on the fast break, they do a good job of driving and they do a good job of making you foul. To me that's a big deal in this game.
On the what he's looking for from his team in practice
"What you want to hear is a buzz in the gym, and I stopped practice numerous times last week to talk about it. I said there is no buzz, you guys are dead. As I tell the team constantly, when coaches have to do that you have no shot. It's like looking at a pond with one-tenth of an inch of ice, its looks right but it isn't right. You learn lessons as you go along in a basketball season and hopefully this is a lesson that our players have learned. We have a very simple motto. If you're not ready to play then you get beat. I thought we came out ready to play, but again I thought it was somewhat phony based on how we had practiced.
"Maybe I am giving us too much credit, maybe I should just say that Western played great, which they did. But you look at yourself to correct, and that is something that we have to correct because this has been an effort team. I think that even when we struggled this has been an effort group. You could just see a fat-headedness or whatever you wanted to call it throughout Thursday and Friday's practices.
"Even when we were losing four in a row, we told our players "good guys working really hard get results". It may not be tomorrow, and may not be the next day but if you stay after it and they had been, you will get results. Giving up 44 points to a Division I team (Central Michigan) is pretty good, but then the next night you have to do it again and we gave up 41 in the first half."
On playing at home this week
"Everybody feels more comfortable at home, but last year we had to go down to the last shot in six or seven of the last 10 games including the MAC tournament. There's no guarantee playing at home or away. You have to play how your particular team plays. Our particular team has to be a very hard-playing, concentrating group. When it plays anything other than that it gets beat.
"NIU will come in here as the best team we have played in here. We are going to have to play really well, we are going to have to play as good as we have played all year if not better to win this game in my opinion."
