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SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Below is a transcript of Fred Hoiberg’s postgame press conference following Iowa State’s 85-83 third-round NCAA Tournament victory over North Carolina.
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Q. Coach, can you just tell us about the process in game of adjusting without Georges, the offense bogged down in spots, but really came through at the end, five different players scoring. So it wasn’t just DeAndre and Melvin doing the job there?
COACH HOIBERG: Well, I was really nervous going into this one. I’ve got a card. I draw up the actions that I pull from our pool that I think will be successful in each game. I usually have one side of my card with plays for DeAndre and a whole other side of my card with plays for Georges. I’ve got a little section for shooters and a little section for Melvin. We’ll see if we can get some mismatched stuff for Dustin Hogue. But that whole back side of my play sheet was obviously thrown out the window today. And DeAndre’s right, when we need a basket, he’s usually the guy we go to. He’s been our Mariano Rivera. He’s been our closer all throughout this season. So to have other guys step up Monte Morris once again, Naz got the glory for hitting the three at Oklahoma State, but Monte hit the one to tie it to send it to a third overtime.
So guys just stepped up. Melvin’s pass to DeAndre was a great outlet. Then DeAndre getting himself out of the basket on that last isolation play that we ran for him. So you’re not going to replace Georges Niang with one guy. You have to have a collective effort, and our guys certainly stepped up today to help fill that void.
Q. Coach, what do you think it says about Kane that he was able to make so many tough plays when you guys were under pressure and you were down and really had little margin for error? Also, what was going through your mind during that final sequence there?
COACH HOIBERG: Yeah, first of all, with DeAndre, we’ve got so much confidence in him. Again, that one sheet of the card stays the same with those plays that we run for DeAndre. And that’s what we facilitate through DeAndre and Georges. Now Monte Morris will have a little more of that role with Georges being on the shelf.
The last sequence, nervous, didn’t know if they were going to get the ball over half court where they’ve got so many guys that can go and jump a lot higher than our guys. You worry about a lob play. They run a very good elevator play. They ran against North Carolina State at the end and ran through a gap to get them a shot. I guess those were the things where I was envisioning in my head. How are we going to do it? What are we going to do with the in‑bounder? Are we going to run it to Paige because we felt he would probably get the shot.
So just a lot of things, lot of emotions, getting ready for that last play. Then they called it right there, and I was standing right next to Roy. Again, he gave me a big hug and wished me all the best. So it was a great moment and especially showed a lot of class, I think, on Coach’s part.
Q. Coach, can you describe your thought process on the last isolation play you designed for DeAndre, and what the options were there if he had been closed off?
COACH HOIBERG: Yeah, it’s a play that we run to try to confuse the defense a little bit. You slip your guy coming up, set the screen. We’ve run it in the past and won the game when two guys last year with Will Clayburn and Georges Niang got a lay‑up against West Virginia at home. We’ve got a couple of different plays we run late game, but that’s one of them to get DeAndre in isolation. You get your two best players in the two‑man game to hopefully confuse them a little bit. We had a shooter, Naz Long, in the corner if his man helps him. So you put it in the player’s hands that you trust the most, and it certainly paid off the most for us tonight.
Q. Following up on that, could you just talk about, I guess, how tough he must be physically? How banged up was he and how much of a cause for concern was that?
COACH HOIBERG: Well, he kept hurting something else, so I think he was forgetting about all his other little injuries. He fell on his back. Looked like he was holding his elbow a little bit. He got hit in the chin yesterday, looked like he was a boxer a little woozy out there. Then I called a play for him and he forgot about it.
So just some little things to just try to nagging things. He cramps up a lot. That is one problem that he has. We try to hydrate him really well the night before and throughout the day of the game. That was probably the thing that was bothering him the most. He had a little cramp going on in his hamstring.
Q. What were the details around that bloody nose for Dan? Did he start to spontaneously gush or did he run into a wall? Because if it was spontaneous ‑‑
COACH HOIBERG: No, he didn’t faint and fall down.
Q. That’s a bad omen
COACH HOIBERG: Well, he just ‑‑ I told him he was starting. I was sitting him down, I had my arm around him and told him how much I believed in him. Next thing I know he was running over to the trainer to get a plug to put in his nostril to stop the bloody nose. I looked over at Doug Sadler and said I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. I just told Daniel he’s starting and his nose started bleeding.
But, Daniel’s made big plays. We don’t win the BYU game without Daniel Edozie making a big block at the end of that one. The kid is always keeping himself ready. He has a good, big, physical body. Played great minutes for us in the Big 12 tournament in all three games, and that just shows the team that we have. Everybody is ready when their name is called. You never know when that’s going to happen, and stepped up and gave us great minutes.
