Miguel went to the doctor today (Friday) and the doctor released him -- probably a week earlier than we had expected. Miguel will play some against Rice. John will play, too. His, as we have said, is a game-to-game deal. But he will definitely play, too. |
One play in the second half summed up this entire season. We were up by 20 and we had three guys diving on the floor for a loose ball. |
Our effort was tremendous. It's frustrating to get an effort like that and come up short. We didn't give ourselves a chance at the end of the game. |
Our guys call him Rudy. Josh is a guy who comes to practice every day and goes hard. |
Randall did the scouting report on Tulsa during the season. Ed had Southern Miss during the season. So they were both already familiar with those teams. Southern Miss is a lot like ourselves. They are not going to do a lot of different things. They will do two or three things on offense and do them very, very well. They will make you guard everything. |
Rice has as good an offensive player as their is in the league. They start with him and that's important. Transition defense will be very important. They are a very good transition team. And defensively, they are doing a lot of different things. |
Rice is a good basketball team. Offensively they scare you because Almond had scored (30-plus points) in their last four games. That especially concerns you when our strength is not scoring points. |
SMU is one of the top four teams in this league, talent-wise. I'm glad we've already played them twice. |
That crowd was terrific. I don't know if we could have won the game without them. And I know there were people who couldn't come, sitting home by their radios, and they helped us, too. SMU is one of the top four teams in the conference and I'm glad we've got them out of the way. Our defense was key. Our defense is something we work hard on and something the kids have bought into. We also held them (the Mustangs) to only seven offensive rebounds. Doing that to a team like that is big. |
That's something I will have to decide after the 16th game. You can't make that decision until the 16th game. |
That's something they do very well. Besides playing really hard, the best thing they do is rebound. |
The strength of their team is that they are able to shoot the basketball. They've got three guys averaging in double figures. The key to the game is that we have to defend the perimeter and keep them off the offensive glass. |
The thing about Southern Miss is that they've gotten better and better each game. |
The whole game was summed up at the free-throw line. It came down to the last few seconds. If you're going to go 50 percent at the free-throw line, you're not going to have a chance to win against a good team. |
The winner of that game is definitely in the (NCAA) Tournament. (For) the loser, Sunday's going to be a long day. |