Postgame Q&A: Reed Bailey, Tayton Conerway reacts to Indiana basketball's win against Milwaukee

Indiana basketball players Reed Bailey and Tayton Conerway spoke with the media Wednesday night following Indiana basketball’s 101-70 win over Milwaukee.

Below is their full Q&A — as well as a transcript of his conversation, to be added once it becomes available.

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Q. Tayton, start with you on this one. You guys have had ten or more threes each of your first three games, IU fans really been wanting to see shooting return to Bloomington. Your thoughts on how well you’re shooting it and why you’re shooting it so well.

TAYTON CONERWAY: I would say the reason why is probably jus the way how unselfish we are on moving the ball. Like giving up a good shot for a great shot. Sometimes even though that layup is open, there are seven footers now, so if we kick it up, wide open three-point. Lamar, Tucker, they ain’t going to miss too many of them.

And them, yeah, that’s really our reason why right there: Stay unselfish.

Q. To follow up on that, how do you get that in a team, breed that into a team? I imagine some of it is individual mentality, some of it is trusting the offense and trusting each other. But how do you get that sort of instinctive — that everybody’s first reaction is to keep the ball moving rather than trying to take a shot?

REED BAILEY: Just because all the guys here are here to win, and we know that from the coaching staff, from Coach DeVries that the way we’re going to do that is keep the ball moving and make sure that we touch the ball. If we’re moving the ball and cutting and screening and the ball is moving, we’re hard to guard.

You can see with what we’re doing right now, and then with the shooters we got on the floor, I think we’re just a really good basketball team when we’re able to move the ball like we have.

Q. I think the number is like 299 points now. Are there areas you still feel like there is room to grow? How high is the ceiling offensively?

TAYTON CONERWAY: Our defense wasn’t too hot tonight. I mean, it looked good every now and then, but I feel like our defense leads into our offense. So the more we can get them from not getting them seconds chances, them offensive rebounds, which is probably something we’re going work a lot on in practice this week, but as long as we can get them shots limited to one shot we can get out on the break and get a couple more points up there.

Q. May have just answered my question. Was very animated throughout the first half. Was that his source of frustration at halftime message to you guys?

REED BAILEY: Yeah, they had a stretch where they had eight offensive rebounds in the first half, and that’s on me and that’s on just being more physical down there and blocking out and getting those offensive rebounds.

But that was probably a good source of it.

Q. Tayton, in the first half felt like there were some moments where you kind of took it upon yourself to be aggressive, crash the hoop. Is that something you’re conscious of in terms of trying to get those easy buckets when you’re driving it?

TAYTON CONERWAY: Coming into the game my team just had a lot of confidence in me. On the film, I mean, a part that we feel like we could attack was like the one-on-one defense, and there ain’t too many people that can stay in front of our guys.

So definitely just exploiting that and having our teammates kind of like believing in me, and Coach DeVries at the end of the day just telling me, man, they can’t stay in front of you, so go get the job done, and that’s what happened.

Q. Reed, two-part question. Did you ever run track?

REED BAILEY: No, I didn’t.

Q. You may want to consider it if this basketball thing doesn’t work out. The other thing was you guys’ ability to share the ball. You had phenomenal numbers in terms of assists. Just talk about that and how efficient you’ve been with the passing game.

REED BAILEY: Yeah, I think it’s contagious. When everybody else wants to share the ball and we’re all moving it, you know, it makes you want to buy-in and really do that. You know, we’ve preached it throughout the summer and I think we’ve showed it in these first games here, and I think we can just keep getting better, keep making sure we find the open man for the assist. When we get open threes, it’s a pretty good chance that thing is going in.

Q. Tayton, you guys had 24 points off 15 turnovers by Milwaukee. What led to you guys creating those turnovers and really capitalizing throughout game?

TAYTON CONERWAY: I would say staying physical. In Marquette in that second happen we kind of got a way from ourself. We let them play a little bit and let them set up their offense. When we are up there disrupting that offense, I mean, at the beginning the game it’s a little easy, but when it comes to that second half, that second 20 minutes, it gets a lot tougher. People start wearing on you.

Q. Tayton, Darian talked about how you’re a group that understands how to play the game and instinctively knows what to look for with the assists and the ball movement. How much do you see that ability with this team and where does it come from?

TAYTON CONERWAY: I mean, it comes from everywhere. Like even right here. He’s 6’10” and coming down, pushing the break, getting assists. It’s just crazy. Then we got Tucker who can post up, he can shoot, he can come off ball screens. Lamar doing the same thing.

A lot of people label them as just shooters, but the way they can come off ball screen, put him in jail, kind of figure out where that open pass is is something that they’re underrated in and something they’re really good at.

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