Here's a portion of Iowa's first-year head coach told the press after his team downed Maryland in the Big Ten Tournament opener.
CHICAGO -
BEN McCOLLUM: First off, obviously excellent season by Maryland. They gave us fits this game, and obviously the second time we played them they beat us. Coach Williams does a good job. He's going to get that thing going pretty good. I thought our kids after the first 10, 12 minutes kind of settled in. I don't know what it was, if it was just the jitters or not used to the environment. The concentration was pretty low to start, and I think that probably had something to do with the environment maybe, not because it was a big time -- it is a big time place, but more just the conference tournament type of deal. Then we regrouped, settled in, and executed our scout, which was really good.
Question: Ben, I'll ask you the same question I asked the players. Nine assists on nine field goals in that 21-0 run. What did you like about the way the offense was flowing at that point?
BEN McCOLLUM: We passed the ball. That was nice. That's a start. We got stuck, and we didn't see we were just trying to score on the first action. In the second half, I thought we were going to do a better job in basketball. With the actions, we did a better job of executing. We'll get in the pockets a little bit and knock down shots.
Question: First half I know you guys struggled offensively for a while. How did you evaluate the defense? It seemed like there were a lot of 3-point shooters open. I know you struggled to stay in front of Mills, and Coit's a handful. You were better staying in front of the ball today. Did that start with Combs? How would you evaluate the first half defensively?
BEN McCOLLUM: The first half, I thought our offense was poor, and that kind of hurt our defense. I thought the defense kind of held us in there for a while. I thought our rotations were better. I thought we didn't foul so much at the rim. We were much better at showing our hands, which was nice. We had a few that were just like, oh, gosh. Other than that, I thought we did a good job of taking the two shooters away. We gave Number 12 two clean looks that we really didn't want to give him. Other than that, I thought we did a pretty good job.
Question: Tavion Banks, nobody's really talking about him. He didn't have a loud performance, but he had a plus 23 plus-minus. That was the game high. How did you see him affect this game today to have against the best plus-minus?
BEN McCOLLUM: Yeah, he played great. He defended. He defended angles. Did a much better job out there. He kept balls alive. He gets big defensive rebounds when the ball is bouncing around. His energy and enthusiasm for competing and winning is second to none, and I thought he was excellent tonight.
Question: I guess with Cooper Koch set another career high in points. How important is that for your entire team to be able to have someone like him step up, especially here in March?
BEN McCOLLUM: It really spaces the floor for us. I know whatever people would always ask about are you worried about him not taking shots for a stretch? No, I'm not. He'll make them. Just keep taking good shots. He'll make them. We've seen him shoot, and you've seen kind of the result of that.