Iowa players Jordan Bohannon and Tony Perkins, along with Big Ten Tournament MVP Keegan Murray met with the media following the Hawkeyes victory over Purdue. They discussed what it meant to them to win the title, Keegan's feelings about winning the individual honor, and the key shots from Payton Sandfort in the second half that fueled Iowa's victory.

Q. Question for Tony. How's it feel to finally get a chance to celebrate on the gain bridge court? I know your senior year was cut short because of COVID. To get a Big Ten title in this way, just how's it feel for you?

TONY PERKINS: It feels good, very emotional because I was supposed to get this same treatment my senior year of high school but now that I'm doing it at this level, it feels good. I wouldn't want to be nowhere else.

Q. Jordan, a lot's been made of it you coming back for the sixth season. What does this mean to you now? Describe the emotions with the teammates and raising that trophy. It seems like it's almost a dream.

JORDAN BOHANNON: It really is a dream. This is something individually-wise obviously I wanted to do when I came to Iowa City. Everyone on the team was so committed this offseason and we knew that we had something special here. I love these guys, I love Coach. Everything that we have done has been the right way and that's just what makes it so perfect. Everyone here is committed to doing things the right way. And understanding that we had one of the best players in the country, best players to ever go through Iowa to my left and he just stepped up in huge moments throughout the whole season for us to get here. The guy to my right has just been phenomenal all year, stepped into the line up and just gave everything he had these last four games. And I'm just beyond thankful to be in this position.

Q. Keegan, what does it mean to be named most outstanding player? You had this kind of fairytale year. What does it mean to have this kind of honor now?

KEEGAN MURRAY: Yeah, for me it's obviously a big individual honor, but I really couldn't have done this without my teammates. I feel like back at it, like I've had to learn from a lot of guys last year just what it takes to be great at this level, good at this level and guys especially in this tournament have just really had faith in me. That's all I could ask for. I take a bad shot, they tell me to shoot the next one. I miss a shot, they say shoot the next one. That's just the kind of team we are, the kind of guys we have in our locker room. It's a team trophy, it's not an individual one.

Q. Jordan and if anybody else wants to answer as well, did you know on Thursday coming in here that you were going to win this tournament?

JORDAN BOHANNON: Obviously that's something that you have on your mind every time you step foot on to this type of stage. We're playing unbelievable basketball right now. And what makes this so special too is not only obviously Tony's from Indianapolis or from Indiana, he's from The Nap. There's so many Iowa kids on this team that put their blood, sweat and tears into this jersey. You think about just some of the lineups we had out there at points of this season, especially tonight. There's four Metro kids out there on top of Tony, hometown kid here. That's just really special. You don't see that too many times in college basketball. You have guys that are just committed to a school and continue to work for each other and want the best for everyone out there, you know, if you get subbed out or not. It's just an honorable team and this is a once-in-a-lifetime team for sure.

Q. This question's for Keegan. The last seconds of the game I saw -- I think you were mouthing oh, my God. What was kind of going through your mind during those moments?

KEEGAN MURRAY: I mean, it's kind of like everything just got put together for me, just all the hard work that we put in, just the offseason that it took to get here, everything just kind of went on the one there. I couldn't believe it. We struggled earlier on this year a little bit and now we're doing really well and it's just a great feeling.

Q. Jordan, like you said, you came back for the sixth year and I know that there's more that this team wants to do, but how much does it really -- when you think back to what your brothers accomplished now -- I ran into Matt yesterday, he says you've accomplished more than what they ever did. What does that mean to you when you grew up with three older brothers and now what you're doing, the youngest brother right now?

JORDAN BOHANNON: You can only imagine the type of pressure that was put on me coming out of high school. My brothers all won a state title. I was from a phenomenal high school, hometown kid and went to Iowa City. All three of my brothers won a conference title and I heard it every single day wherever I went, whether it was from my brothers or from reporters or from the troll on Twitter. It's just nonstop for me. It was a big deal for me to come here because Coach has always been about being level-headed, never too high, never too low, and I think that's what's been so important for myself this past five and a half, six years. This is the farthest I've been.

I was going through a lot personally, obviously team-wise, too. You look back to our sophomore year, we weren't very good. Now to here, you know, we've been through everything adversity-wise and now we're kind of living through the moment of a dream that we all dreamed about since we were little kids. Like I said, I'm just so happy for everyone part of this team, so happy for Coach. We've done everything the right way and so many great teammates.

Q. Anyone can answer this question, but this was the fourth game in four days, but from the start, the team seemed really locked in, diving for loose balls, getting 50/50 balls. How would you describe the energy and the effort that you played with today?

TONY PERKINS: I'll always try to set the tone, energy at the beginning of the game and boost everybody's energy based off of defense and rebounding. So that's a big part of our team and what we do and we like bringing energy because that's what gets us the leads and the wins.

Q. This is for Keegan. You played 40 minutes, you guys played an extra game, yet last eight minutes or so you looked like the pressured team. What do you attribute that to?

KEEGAN MURRAY: I think for us, I feel like we're just in better shape than a lot of teams. For me, I'm not going to get tired. It's a championship game, I'm not tired at all. I can go home and rest tomorrow. I mean, I feel like all of our guys had the championship mindset tonight, that soreness was out the window for us and anything that was bugging us was thrown out the window and we want to get the championship. All of our guys bought into that and won.

Q. I guess for Jordan and Keegan, and Tony, whoever: What were the emotions like seeing your name on the screen as a five seed? All of a sudden you play Thursday, you probably fly out Tuesday I'm guessing. How much do you process the fact that you've got basically a Big Ten schedule here, you know, three-day prep for the NCAA Tournament?

MODERATOR: He wasn't listening? All right, we'll go to Jordan.

JORDAN BOHANNON: You know, it's what the Big Ten conference kind of set us up for. We played 20 conference games. A lot of days we had COVID -- or no, it wasn't COVID, weather cancellations, so we played a one-day prep and it was no problem for us. We have so many guys that are able to step up in big moments. Coach calls a lot of guys off the bench and they're ready for their number to be called. I think that's what makes our team special because we have a lot of guys that can step up. Just like tonight, Jelly stepped up huge coming in playing 10 minutes. I think that's why our conditioning level is so well because some guys can play their butts off for four to eight-minute stretches and then another line comes in. It's been working for us and this three-day prep is -- honestly, it's a nice rest because we've had four games in four days, so I don't think we'll be too worried about it.

Q. Jordan, I wanted to ask you about two of the biggest buckets of the game I thought were from Payton Sandfort, young guy jumping in there hitting two huge threes. Can you talk about his development and the importance of those shots?

JORDAN BOHANNON: Phenomenal player, another Iowa kid. Coach has made an important value for him and his staff to get these Iowa kids here and change the culture of the Iowa program and the standards.

He hit that first three and he was celebrating and obviously there's still a lot of game left. He looked to the bench and after the game -- or after he came back down the court, I was like what are you doing, why are you celebrating? You're going to hit another one, get ready for your next shot, and the next possession he hit another three. He stepped up in big moments. He's been huge this entire season coming in. It's so hard for guys to come off the bench and provide what he's been able to do, so you've got to give a lot of credit to him. Not only him, but a lot of other guys on the bench, too.

Q. Keegan, the defense I think would be qualified as the story of the day, the number of steals you had was 12 or 13. The number of your turnovers were few. They had 17 or 18. Where did this defensive performance come from and what was the process coming in?

KEEGAN MURRAY: Yeah, I think for us, we stuck to our game plan really well. We forced them to be uncomfortable and that was kind of what our goal was. And obviously they out-rebounded us by a lot and we obviously turned it over a lot, so it kind of balanced it out in itself. And I felt all of our guys were active and bought in. We held them to 66 points and they're a really good offensive team, so that helped us win, for sure.