Nov. 14, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery 
Iowa vs. South Dakota State
Postgame Hawkeye Player Quotes
F, Eric May
On South Dakota State
“They had a trip up to Canada this year so they’ve played a few more games. They’ve been playing together for a while and it showed. They hit shots and they made plays.”
On officially starting the season
“It’s good to hit the floor. I would have preferred a different result but there’s nothing we can do about this one now. We’ll break down the game and find some things and be ready to move on.”
On the early second half run
“We just tried to play our game. The first half we were slowing down and not really playing the way we had been practicing. That’s not going to help us win games. We have to be mindful of the way we want to play and the tempo we want to establish.”
F, Zach McCabe
On facing South Dakota’s defense
“They were doing a good job closing in on our penetration and that made it difficult to get the ball out. We’re going to move on from and it and we’re trying to stay positive. We had our share of problems but overall I thought we did pretty well. We just have to correct some of the mistakes that we made.”
On opening the season against South Dakota
“This was a good team. They had players. They had (Nate) Walters and Clint (Sargent) and they played really well. We continued to give them second and third opportunities and we’re going to correct that. It’s our first game and we’re ready to move on.”
On hosting Louisiana-Monroe in two days
“It’s kind of nice to have a game (so soon) after a loss. We have to move on from this and take a look at our mistakes and keep things positive from here on out.”
SDSU coach Scott Nagy quotes
Opening statement
“One of the big things for me as a coach is to have a physical team. One of the things we don’t really have is a physical team. Iowa’s physical and they threw us around. I was a little bothered by our softness, but the one thing we do is we shoot it. We were 10 -20 against Eastern Illinois and we were 10- 21 tonight. When you hit them at the right time, and we hit some at the right time, it kind of takes the wind out of a team. Iowa is going to be fine, and when they get [Matt] Gatens back…we know that’s a big loss for them. Offensively they took us out of everything we wanted to do, we were just fortunate that Nate [Wolters] played well. He played well and Clint [Sargent] played well. He’s a tremendous point guard and we know that. Now some other people know that. We just didn’t rebound the ball, but I tell you, the last 10 minutes we got the rebounds we needed because we made them miss some shots.”
Q: How important were the last minutes of the first half where you were down six and went on a 10-0 run to end the half?
“That was the biggest point in the game because up to that point-I think it was 3:49-I couldn’t begin to tell you how poorly we were playing. I was so frustrated with our kids. The lack of execution and the softness, but we started to get some loose balls about that point. I know Fran [McCaffery] is not happy about them having 14 turnovers at half, but that was a big key. They turned the ball over a lot in that period. We were able to make some plays and hit some shots. That was a big point in the game for us.”
Q: You’re 2-0 and you have the next seven at home. Do you feel like you’re in a position to make a run here?
“Well we hope so. Since we made the transition to Division I – – and we’re deep into it now, there’s no more transition – – but we’ve had to play a lot of road games in November and December and just take it on the chin. We finally feel like we have our program back to the point where we had it when we were Division II, which we had a tremendous team and some tremendous talent. We just feel like now we’ve passed that point and we have the talent we need to win again and the depth. But to play on the road in non-conference is brutal, it just is. A lot of the Big Ten teams just don’t do it, they may play some neutral. But somebody at our level we have to go on the road and play some games if we want to get somebody to come back. The nice thing for us is quite honestly, is that we don’t have to go back on the road anymore until after finals, because that’s been tough on our kids academically. We’ve missed two days of class here this whole semester. They get to stay home and they get to play. As a coach my job is to get them ready for the Thursday night game and not let them get too hot. We can take the film and show them the many, many mistakes we made.”