Penn State Men's Basketball
Cornell Head Coach Brian Earl Postgame Press Conference
vs. Cornell - December 29, 2019
Opening Statement
It was a disappointing loss. We never really got on track there, difficult team to play for us especially being a little undersized. Coach Chambers has done a great job and we knew we were up against it with them. It's hard to mimic what you're going to see from a team like this. We'll take some lessons home with this but now for us it's into a new season – couple more nonconference and Ivy League games coming up.
Q: Earlier in the season you guys were struggling from deep, and then the last two games you've been a lot better. What's changed?
A: I don't know. We haven't done too much differently. We work on shooting every day of practice for the three years I've been here. We made a couple when the game was a little out of reach, so we'll take a look at it. There's open shots for us, there have been open shots in our multiple close losses, we just have to step up and make them. Tonight I guess it's good to see the ball go in but you've got to sort of be able to make them when it's an actual game.
Q: Penn State had a lot of success in the paint today. What would you attribute to their success in the paint and what were the tough matchups for you today?
A: They're enormous and athletic. At our level it's rare, I know Yale has that sort of size for us and they made a fight out of their game. For us, we just don't have the horses to match [Mike] Watkins and [Lamar] Stevens and so I think Coach Chambers did a good job of understanding that we knew that and that we were going to throw some schemes at them and those guys passed the ball pretty well out of it. For us, it's a bit of pick your poison – our center's 6-6, 6-7, guarding a 6-10 guy who outweighs him by 40 pounds – there's not, I don't know many defenses you can do much about in that situation.
Q: How does a game like this help you guys going forward?
A: We've learned a lot of lessons from close losses. This one you sort of understand how hard high major teams go. You understand that our league plays games like this routinely and it's not just us who learns lessons this way. Hopefully the lesson isn't to lay down a little bit like we did. Every game you try to take something from but it's difficult for teams in our situation to play games like this. You take that we need to work hard all the time, can't make too many mistakes. Outside of that there's not much else.