Feb. 7, 2009

Recap | Box Score

Cleveland State at Loyola
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Gentile Center
Post-Game Quotes

Loyola Head Coach Jim Whitesell

Opening Statement
"It was a hard played game, we just could not get over the hump there. You have to give Cleveland State a lot of credit. We got off to a poor start in the first half, down 10-2, then we got it back to 18-16 and it looked like it would be a real good game then we got down again by 10. We scored the first possession of the second half and then, defensively, we just did not guard for the next three minutes very well and all of a sudden the lead opens up and you are fighting back and forth. You cannot do that against any team in our league."

On shooting woes
"We got some good shots we just did not knock them down. We just have to stay with it. There are some guys going 1 for 6 or 2 for 12 and it's not that good of a percentage. I thought Leon Young played a pretty good game, offensively, and I'm happy to see that. We got beat today by a pretty good basketball team so no excuses. We did not do what we needed to do to pull off the W."

On second half
"I was really happy, first possession (of the second half), we get a basket and it's like ok we are here to stay and then the next four or five minutes we do not play very good defense. Some of our big guys, literally, just missed assignments and put our guards in some tough positions and we had two or three bad turnovers and next thing you know what is four points is now 10 points."

On Marcus Thomas
"I thought he played really well. I thought Marcus was ready to go and he's been pretty consistent off the bench all year. He's played with good energy, he has shot the ball pretty well and in conference he is shooting over 40% from three-point range. We need to find him more at times, honestly. I know he took nine shots but we would like to get him some more shots, especially when he is shooting the ball that way."

Loyola senior forward Leon Young

On getting the ball inside
"We have been putting a lot of emphasis on getting the ball down low. Cleveland State, they're tough-nosed and everybody saw that out there today. They are trying to get stop us from getting the ball down low but we started clicking in the second half. Coming into this game, we had talked about that being one of the main things, us being able to move the ball and get the ball moving in general."