Here's a portion of what Iowa's head coach, Bennett Stirtz, and Cam Manyawu told the media after the Hawkeyes' season-ending loss to Illinois.
HOUSTON -
Q. Bennett, you were here one year. Obviously your legacy with Coach McCollum stretches far beyond that, but what does it mean to know that you've had one of the greatest individual seasons in Iowa men's basketball history and kind of what do you take away from this brief but I'm sure very enjoyable experience in Iowa City?
BENNETT STIRTZ: Yeah, you can't really control what anyone else is going to say about you, but hopefully it's good. I just gave it my all in this Hawkeye uniform. But I just hope that they have continued success and that's all I want for them. They will do just that.
Q. Illinois was plus 17 on the glass and 16 O boards. What was the challenge there? I know it's easy to look at your performance against Florida, against a dominant rebounding team, and say, well, you guys should have been able to do that again. What's different about Illinois and what wasn't working in either half tonight?
CAM MANYAWU: They consistently crashed all five guys and we didn't do a great job making sure we were boxing out and getting the ball, and that was just kind of consistently through the game. We just didn't do a very good job hitting and making sure we were getting the defensive rebounds and that led to them getting a bunch of O boards.
Q. You mentioned the horn malfunction. That's a weird thing to happen in an Elite Eight game. What were you thinking at the moment? Did that have any affect?
BEN McCOLLUM: Probably gave them a little bit more of a break. I thought we were able to get going and I thought that gave 'em a break. But, yeah, nothing I can control, so it is what it is. Just move on, move forward. It didn't probably impact the fact that we gave up 16 O boards, so (laughing).
Q. I know you can't comment directly on officials, but there was a lot going on. It was visible, the frustration from your guys, so I guess I'll form this question so that we don't get you in trouble. But how do you deal with your players that are visibly -- Cooper fouls out, they're visibly frustrated in a game where you're still in it towards the end. How do you help them manage through what was obviously a frustrating situation there?
BEN McCOLLUM: Yeah, I think that one was pretty frustrating. That one is fine to comment on. I don't think it's like the officials were bad. I'm not saying that. Yeah, that specific situation, I thought that that was kind of let go throughout the whole game, where Cooper couldn't get through his screens consistently, which was fine. That was fine. Like, move on, that's how they're going to call it, and then to call it late was disappointing.
Q. I know it might be hard to appreciate the season in this moment, but can you just reflect on your journey over the past couple of years and how far you've come and just kind of everything you've accomplished?
BEN McCOLLUM: Yeah, it is tricky like with these scenarios because just as a competitor you think you should be in the Final Four right now. So it's so tricky. Especially right after it. I think the journey's been interesting. I can remember two years ago I was in Maryville, Missouri, and then I went to Drake and I remember walking into Drake and I'm sitting there, I had been somewhere for 15 years, and I'm like, what in the heck did I just do. Just turned my world upside down, turned my family's world upside down. But sometimes you have to do that, one, to make sure that you give kind of more to different communities and stuff like that because do you have a kind of higher purpose in life, in my opinion.
And then the other part is, is you have to make yourself uncomfortable. And it's been uncomfortable for a couple years. But we're getting there. We're continuing to build and I certainly appreciate my family, my wife and kids and all that they have sacrificed for us to kind of reach this goal and, you know, the goal of getting Iowa basketball to where it belongs. I think we've got a good foundation for that and we'll continue to build it.