When we play at Mackey, my (former) neighbors are sitting behind the bench. There will be babysitters there who took care of my kids. It's always going to be a tough situation, but if we win it makes it more rewarding than anything. |
When we went to Wisconsin last year they had that streak and it's one of the things our guys talked about. They really wanted to end that. |
When we were flying back we were looking at the bracket. |
When you see the initial reaction of the official, he calls it good right away, that's how close it was. |
Who's going to help Brian Randle next year be a leader? That might determine if we're going to be worth a darn next year. |
With both of them out, we can go through an entire drill and not score. |
With our schedule, we've got to grab a big win. This is a huge week. If we're going to compete, we've got to get one of them. If we find a way to get two, we're really in the hunt then. |
With those freshmen, until you start yelling at them and giving them plays, you don't know what happens to their head. You don't know if they are going to have brain freeze or if they are going to pick up things. |
You always feel you can be successful, but to be where we are at, it's surprised myself and my staff. You've got to give Dee Brown and James Augustine credit for kind of conveying from one group to the next how hard you've got to compete to stay at this level. They've been great leaders. |
You always think you can be successful, but to be where we're at, it's surprised myself and our staff. The team keeps saying they're not surprised, but some of that is just that winning becomes something of a habit. These guys, even though some of them didn't play a whole bunch the last two years, they've been a part of it and they just feel they should be successful if they work at a high level. |
You always wonder if you can make plays at the end. |
You could tell right away. In the team meeting he didn't say a word and he's usually making fun of me, the class clown sitting at the back of the room. |
You don't want to coach against your friends. But once the ball goes up, Matt won't care if I'm on one end and he's on the other. It's just his team against our team. We'll laugh before and laugh after, but in between, we'll battle. |
You get James out, and it changes the whole game. They go on a 7-0 run [that stretched to 11-0] after James went out. We did score two baskets, but they just went down and scored boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And in other games -- in the Wisconsin game, he gets fouls, goes out and they make their nice run. So we need him in the game. |
You have to give him a lot of credit for what he has meant to Illinois basketball. He's had a major impact in taking Illinois basketball to another level. |