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Players Q&A: Tucker DeVries, Sam Alexis reacts to Indiana's win over Incarnate Word

Browning Headshotby: Zach Browning20 hours agoZachBrowning17
Tucker DeVries and Sam Alexis

Indiana basketball forwards Tucker DeVries and Sam Alexis spoke with the media Sunday evening following Indiana’s win over Incarnate Word.

Below is their full Q&A, as well as a transcript of the conversation (to be added once it became available).

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Q. Tucker, I guess just as a team when you have a bad shooting night like that, inferior opponent, what do you take from it and sort of how do you look at it and say, okay, we fix A, B, C?

TUCKER DeVRIES: First of all, credit to them. I thought they came in confident, played well, executed their game plan pretty well.

On our end it took us out of rhythm a little bit, especially in the first half; second half obviously shots weren’t falling.

But I think at the end of the day that’s important, to still find a way to win games when shots aren’t falling. I know it didn’t look pretty, but that’s part of growing. I think there is a lot we can take away from that as we look at it tomorrow.

Q. As a team that wants to shoot the ball a fair amount, particularly from distance, wants the three to be a big part of your offense, where do you go as a group to kind of find your shot in a game when maybe they get you out of your rhythm early? What needs to happen to get that firing again?

TUCKER DeVRIES: Yeah, to be honest, I thought Sam, was — without him we weren’t winning that game today. He was a beast down low mand that’s probably where it starts. As our guards and wings we got to get downhill more and get to the free throw line and then get our rhythm in that.

Q. Down the stretch why did you kind of feel like you guys struggled to close them out a little bit in kind of that final five minutes?

TUCKER DeVRIES: To be honest, execution-wise I thought on defense they hit some tough shots, especially late. I thought early we probably weren’t executing at a high level. I mean, we’ll see after watching it. I thought at the end they hit some tough ones, 15 feet, or kind of the ones that we were trying to give up — not trying to give them up easy ones, but if you’re going to give up a shot, that’s where you want it to be.

Credit to them. They hit some tough shots. At the end of the day it’s just finding a way to win once you get into those situations. I thought it was good for us to still pull out in the right way.

Q. I think the margin late trimmed to about five. What is it about ya’ll that when it becomes a little tough you guys just rally and gel and can close it out?

SAM ALEXIS: I mean, Coach always tell us to keep going, so I just feel like we just — we are a whole bunch of seniors, so we just put our heads together and just went out there and played hard the last five, four minutes.

Q. For Sam, the first half you guys put together a tremendous run and a lot of those shots were two-footers, not three-pointers, and you were open so much. How do you get so wide open in such a small pace?

SAM ALEXIS: I mean, when you got guys like Lamar and Tuck, other guys on our team that can shoot it so well it gives me opportunities to just slip and get easy wide open dunks.

So just thankful for those guys who can make threes.

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