We did a much better job moving the ball inside out in the second half. |
We did a pretty good job of staying down and timing it. |
We did it with mirrors a little bit. |
We didn't do a good enough job of defending them in the first half. They were beating us off the dribble and creating opportunities to knock down the threes. In the second half, we did such a better job of keeping the ball out of the paint (for Kentucky). |
We didn't have the ball movement and the player movement that we had had in the course of the year. But I thought the defense and rebounding in the first half kept us somewhat close. I was pleasantly surprised that we were only down 11. |
We didn't want to put David into the game, but we didn't have much of a choice. Anthony (associate coach Anthony Grant) was out of eligibility. |
We don't have the luxury of making a mistake on the backboard, and we make mistake after mistake. For every time one of our guys gets praise for blocking a shot, when they don't, they give up position by leaving the floor too early. |
We don't pay any attention to seeds. It doesn't matter if it's a No. 11 or a No. 14 or whatever. It's the team we have to play, not the seed. |
We felt like Darrel Mitchell was the key to their team, so we tried to run at him and trap him as much as we could. When he gets his 18 or 19 points, everything else falls into place. |
We got beat by a better team with more experience. |
We had size on them and I felt like if he got it up there we could get a rebound and put it back in. |
We had some better ball movement, some better player movement. |
We had won 17 games, but going into tonight we were 0-0. I knew Duke had lost, but these are different guys. They are more wrapped up in trying to become a good team, to become better individually and really sacrifice for one another. |
We have an enormous amount of room to get better. Are we the 75th-ranked team in the country? Are we the second-ranked team in the country? You know what, we're probably somewhere in the middle. Wherever that may be, it's probably fair. |
We have been right there. There have been some things that have been out of our control a little. I think our guys have put themselves in positions to win, and you are not going to have them all go your way. . . . What our team has done to this point in time and the way they have battled, I think it's pretty impressive. |