I think that, generally speaking, you're on one side of the fence or the other. When I'm out in public, a lot of UC fans tell me they cheer for Xavier, and then I spy on them during games and they're cheering like crazy for UC. |
I think they are headed to the NCAA Tournament. They've got some great seniors and an exciting point guard. I really want them to win - they have a lot of pride. |
I think we have to win the (Atlantic 10) tournament. Maybe not, but looking at it, being realistic of where we're at right now, we're one of those teams. There's a lot of them out there, and there's a lot of them that will pull it off, and we want to be one of them. |
I think we respect Gonzaga a great deal. I think it stops there. When you look at our program through different coaches and different players over that same span we've been right there doing a lot of things as well. |
I think we've certainly been better (defensively) in the past, but we're going to have to play defense in a little different way now. It's not going to be that grind-it-out, man-to-man style. We're going to change it up, mix some things in, and (Wednesday) our zone helped us. |
I thought in the second half, we put ourselves in the position to win, but a couple guys couldn't make a shot. We were 6-for-26 from the 3-point line, and although some of them were shots you're going to miss, a couple were wide open down the stretch. |
I thought our small lineup looked good. That may give us the best chance to both score on offense and maybe be a little more functional on defense, but we have to take a look at that right now. I think when we were at our best (Saturday), we went small and tried to spread the court, and that really opened up some driving lanes, and as those closed, it opened up some great 3-point shots. |
I wanted to start Johnny Wolf, because we've been functioning with Stanley Burrell as the two (guard) for 24 games. We were trying to keep the start of the game as similar as possible. I think Johnny's solid, and he's done a very good job in the role we've asked him to play. (Saturday), he had a bigger role, and he delivered. |
I would use the word alarming. We're a team that practices very well and hard, and we pass the ball well, and we've shown we can rebound. Through nine games, we all have to take a hard look at what we need to do to shore that up. If we could shore that up, we'd have a terrific team. |
I'll stick with my former statement. That says it all. |
I'm not going to use Brian Thornton as an excuse. I love him, and he's gone. What you miss is just the physical size and presence of a guy 6-8, 240, but I'm not going to go down that alley. We're a different team now. |
I'm not sure. I hesitate to go one way or the other. We have to get back on track for a big home game on Saturday. We have to come back from a big loss. These next two days will be big for us. We'll learn a lot more about our team after these next couple days. |
I'm really proud of Cole. Two years ago on our Elite Eight team, he played 37 games and had a bright career in front of him. (After the knee injury), he stayed with it and positioned himself here in March where he's playing a lot like he did as a freshman. He gives our team something we badly need, and that's rebounding. Especially without Thornton, that's our Achilles' heel. And tonight that wasn't as big of a problem for us. |
I'm sure it affects him a little bit with the pain. I don't know what we'll do in practice with him. We're going to be very careful. If he would disappear, I don't know if we would get eight rebounds in a game. |
I'm very impressed. We won the tournament in large part due to his ability to rebound. Brandon Cole getting hurt a year ago and taking as long as he did, he really stuck with it when a lot of kids would have thrown in the towel. |