Nov. 19, 1999

Illinois Quotes

Coach Lon Kruger

Both teams played hard tonight. The game opened up in the second half. Our defense kept us in it in the first half and we sharpened up our play in the second. Our defensive intensity picked up a notch and we had a lot of good plays and a lot of guys getting good looks.

(on Western Illinois' defense)
Western had a good plan against us. They changed defenses back and forth. They played very well especially with their zone in the first half. In the second half we were able to establish a better pace.

(on the Peoria trio of Marcus Griffin, Frank Williams, and Sergio McClain)
All three are very good players as are a lot of other guys on our team. Griffin was able to establish himself down low, while Serg was able to create shots and dish off. Frank had a solid game out front and created a lot of shots.

(on the balanced playing time)
There is no preconceived plan to balancing out their time on the court. We are going with the guys that get results and they are going to play more. The guys are not bothered with sharing playing time and are handling it very well.

Lucas Johnson

(on providing a spark of the bench)
Sergio and Cleotis really helped me out tonight. They got me a lot of wide open shots. They were the ones that were responsible for my success.

Western Illinois Quotes

Coach Jim Kerwin

It got tough in the 2nd half. Sometimes you're limited to how hard you can play. We played great the first half, and guarded the heck out of them. They couldn't score on us either.

(on Martinez)
Martinez played good, but we need to get him more shots.

(on own team)
We're trying to find guys to fit in with us. We won't play 13 guys two weeks from now.

(on playing Illinois)
It was a good game for us. It was a good learning experience. It gets us ready for conference games.

Juan Martinez

(on performance)
If we would have won the game, I would be happy. My individual performance doesn't matter if we don't win. If I scored no points, and we won, I would be happy.

(on Illinois' performance in the 2nd half)
They picked it up 25 notches. We didn't. They just had more intensity than we did.