Watching film, I'm wondering why he's still in college. He's such a talented player. He's a little bit of a Kobe Bryant. He can get you on the pull-up jumper, the three. He can go to the basket. He does so many things, and he's smooth at it. You have to have a sense of urgency against him. If you let down, he's going to get you. |
We (recruited him) a little bit. I've known him since fifth or sixth grade and he's a quality player and quality kid. It just wasn't the right situation. And at some point he felt he needed to get away. He went to a prep school (near Boston) and it's worked out great for him now at Washington. |
We are good at closing out on shooters. We work at it very hard. I hope that's a positive. You always say good defense can overcome good offense. We'll see on Sunday if that's true. |
We beat them four times in a row, we beat them on Senior Day, how would you feel? We embarrassed them last week on their court. They had all the motivation. Of all the teams I didn't want to come back and play a week later ... and they're a good team. |
We can be one of the top 10 or 15 teams in the country. At other times, we don't play with that same energy. We have two seniors. Last year, we had five older guys. They understood what it was about. |
We can't have James getting out-of-position fouls. We looked at the tape from Saturday and he's covering for people when we don't need him to. We can't have the reaches. We're reaching too much as post guys. |
We can't just turn it on and off. On paper, the Big Ten looks pretty tough, and we have to be ready to play. I don't think we're good enough not to play hard and kind of blue collar. Last year we were white collar. We were pros offensively, we had so many weapons. We could turn it on and off when we wanted and toy with people. But we're not that way. |
We could be anywhere from first to seventh. We could tie for first with some craziness and could be as low as seventh. That's a big drop. You wish that what you did the first three months would be more important, but there's so much parity, it's coming down to how you finish. Not only for us but other Big Ten teams. |
We could go small and play James at the five and Warren Carter or Brian Randle at the four. There's all kinds of combinations. We might try something and it might not work and we'll have to go to another idea. |
We could have gone undefeated in the regular season and lost in the first or second round and felt like a failure. This year, in my mind, we're a little bit of an underdog. If we make a great run, we would be surprising some people. |
We could make a statement with a win at Michigan State. |
We definitely have a lot of questions. |
We did not get a lot of free throws last year and we did not get a lot of inside points, and I'm hoping we can do that, which will also make it easier on our 3-point shooters. |
We did that. We got the crowd in. I thought we continued it throughout the first half. |
We didn't get back on 'D' like we should have. Some of it was mental, guys missing shots and they don't run back. |