Watch what Matt Painter and the Purdue players said after winning against the Trojans Thursday night.
Video again courtesy of our friends at Boiler Upload.
Trey Kaufman-Renn on Cam Heide’s impact and Purdue’s early efforts – “Obviously he came out, had a double-double, but just playing hard, man, giving that effort that we needed because our energy was horrible at the beginning of the game.”
Cam Heide on building his own confidence in the game – “Any time for someone like me to be able to make a play like a rebound, something that a few people might view as a simple play, but it kind of helps me get engaged in the game, especially a few trips up and down the floor.”
Matt Painter on Purdue’s energy and resiliency – “Obviously we’ve had a tough time finding our energy. We’re obviously a good offensive team. So, like we make shots, right? We have the best field goal percentage in our league, the best three-point field goal percentage in our league. The problem was the team that got second in both of those was the team that we were playing.”
Coach Painter on the final USC shot by Desmond Claude – “Let’s be frank about it, he shot that floater at the end, and we got lucky. He has an eight-foot floater that he makes a lot, and he just misses it. Give us credit for getting the rebound, but they got to a pretty good spot right there, but that’s what we were trying to do.”
Painter on Braden Smith’s lack of volume shooting in the game – “When we run something, he’s very knowledgeable as a player, as an offensive player. So just like understanding the purpose of what we’re running, and then just trust your instincts and trust your skill. If he gets 20 shots, cool. If he gets 10, cool. There’s another team out there, and a lot of teams people look at it. Why did you — we got beat by UConn, and a bunch of people are like, why did you guys go away from the 3s? Well, UConn is the best defensive team we’ve played in 10 years. They took them away, so we went to Z Bo as much as we could because he’s 15 for 25 from the field, and they didn’t think we could beat them without getting any 3s.
Well, they took it away. There’s nothing you can do. People think you push a button and say, hey, we’re going to shoot 25 threes tonight, we’re going to shoot 35 threes. We are going to do this. If you’re that dominant and that good, God bless you.”