Opening Statement
“Really proud of the effort tonight. I thought the guys, from start to finish, really played with great juice and physicality. Give Omaha a lot of credit for coming in here and really pressuring us. That bothered us for a stretch. I thought Blaise (Keita) was terrific tonight, after a tough opening game. He came out and really set the tone for us from a physicality standpoint, getting 12 rebounds and almost a double-double. Emmanuel (Bandoumel) hitting those first couple threes for us early in the game. You know what he’s giving you on the other end, all the time, but he gave us a great boost offensively and was in attack mode all night. C.J. (Wilcher) hit timely shot after timely shot for us and it was an important win. Guys who didn’t play a lot last game stepped up. I give Jamarques Lawrence a ton of credit for going out there. He didn’t take a shot, but he had a huge impact on that win with his defensive intensity. Denim Dawson once again terrific, it was good to see him out there being aggressive on the offensive end. I’m gonna give a shoutout to Denim’s dad. He was a special forces marine and came and spoke to our team yesterday and was unbelievable in the message he gave to our guys about leadership and accountability and togetherness. In his world, as he leads grown men into combat, in his world if you mess up its life and death, in our world its wins and losses. He gave a great message to our players yesterday. To get that message from a guy who has been in a lot of battles I thought was very important for our guys to hear.”
On responding to Omaha’s run
“I thought we did a lot of really good things to get the lead to 17 in the first half then I think we got a little sped up. We attacked a couple of times into a crowd that wasn’t there. Once we started playing off two feet and making simple plays, we had very productive possessions. That one stretch where we got a little sped up and had a couple turnovers, that’s what got Omaha out in transition for layups and threes. That’s a good team. They went and battled Kansas and the final score was not indicative of the game. That’s a really good basketball team that’s well coached. I thought the physicality our team played with was the thing I was most happy with. You can’t back down when teams go on runs. We eventually took the lid off the basket.”
On Blaise Keita’s performance
“He got us off to a good start. Got an early basket, I thought he really rebounded and had really good pop out there. I’m happy for him. Blaise is a guy who has put in a ton of work for us. He’s not a guy that’s down there hollering for the ball. He’s a screen setter, does a lot of dirty work and took a charge. He’s by far the leader for us in that category. He does a lot of little things for us, but the physicality set the tone for us tonight.”
Nebraska Players
On holding intensity throughout the entire game
Emmanuel Bandoumel: “We are still trying to be consistent. Not letting up our energy for the whole 40 minutes. We are still building on that. We are still building that culture. And I think we did a pretty good job once the game was live at matching their energy. Even outmatching their energy. I think that is big. For us, that is what we need coming into a conference game and bigger teams that have that type of energy. We need to match it, or we need to outmatch it. So, I think we did a pretty good job at showing we can do that.”
On Nebraska’s physicality
CJ Wilcher: “I thought we played really physical. I thought that was a really big component to add on to the energy part. I thought that was a part of energy as well. Making your presence be known. I think we did a good job at that.”
On Nebraska’s physicality slowing Omaha down
CJ Wilcher: “All of that is connected to energy. My main thing today is giving energy, receiving energy and then that we maintain energy throughout the team. I think that was just my message. Eventually, they started to feel it. We started to feel it because they are a physical team too. It is about persevering through that and sticking to what we had said.”
On two Nebraska teams playing each other
CJ Wilcher: “That definitely played a part in it. We had a lot to prove and I know those guys came here feeling like they had a lot to prove. It was just two Nebraska teams going at it and competing at a high level. We went on our runs. They went on their runs. They were bumping us. We were bumping them. It was definitely felt.”
On different guys stepping up
CJ Wilcher: “It’s definitely encouraging. It just shows how deep our bench is and how are standards have been working. It’s early in the season, so like Coach (Hoiberg) said it’s going to be different guys every night. Whether that is guys knocking down shots or making good reads offensively and playing good defense and sticking to our principles, it gives a lot of comfort from the coaching and player’s standpoint. If a guy goes out, like I did today, Juwan (Gary) went out, we can bring somebody in and they pick up the slack so it’s definitely a comforting factor.”
Omaha Coach Chris Crutchfield
Opening Statement
“I thought our guys fought really hard tonight. When you get down 11 like we did and have to fight back from behind it’s an uphill battle. But we got fighters and guys that are competitive, and I thought they did a good job of staying in there. We had so many lows offensively where we couldn’t score and there were opportunities where we couldn’t defend and couldn’t keep them in front of us, so we were on our heels defensively. Nebraska is a good team. They’re long and have deceptive length and athleticism and cover up gaps fast. They’re a good basketball team, but we’re a young, inexperienced basketball team and we’re going to continue to grow and get better.”
On Offensive Lulls
“Well part of it is if we can’t get Frankie (Fidler) going early, because he is the leader of our basketball team right now, and he struggled early to get some shots. He’s in a situation that he’s never been in before where he’s the key person on the scouting report and he was able to get by last year without that, so he has to learn how to navigate through that and we’ll teach him. He’ll be fine.”
On foul trouble
“A lot of it is we weren’t ready to compete on the ball and we have a lot of work to do defensively. Their athleticism is deceptive and they’re quicker than you think. I think Sam (Griesel) going off the bounce to his right is deceptive and he knows how to draw fouls. He’s a big, strong guard, and if that’s what we have to face in the Summit then we have to get ready.”
On takeaways from first two games
“I told them in the locker room that I like the way they competed and continued to fight. But I told them we got a lot of work to do defensively, especially in our man-to-man defense. I told them to keep their heads, this is a game where you’re going to learn and grow, and I told them we have a team that is going to get better every game out.”
