It seemed like Josh got every rebound. |
It very well may be (too tough). I felt having a young team and a talented team that I wanted to challenge them early and get them to play at a high level. In order to do that, you have to play against good competition. |
It's not about the future. The future is for us to be better right now. That's what we're striving for. |
Josh Lawrence is a guy that's very dear to me. He's one of the very first guys that said 'yes' to this program. Even though he was struggling early on, I kept saying he deserved my loyalty. |
My mother died of cancer, so it's something that's very dear to me. |
Obviously, our goal is to play in the NCAA Tournament. But if we can finish in the top three consistently, that's an unbelievable thing. We've done it three straight years. |
Player development is going to be huge for us. Physical and mental toughness, through our strength training, is going to be most important. |
Ryan had a great night. He is good when he's aggressive. |
The key to that game was our bench. I've been disappointed, not with the play of our bench, but more so the energy and enthusiasm and emotion. We preached the last few days to be excited on the bench. |
This is the best chemistry we've had. I think our guys enjoy coming to practice. |
Ultimately, it comes down to a half-court game. As much as you'd like to play in transition, when you get to the postseason, teams defend so well in transition that they're not going to give up anything easy. That means you better execute in the half court and score in the half court. |
We got exposed against them the last time. When that happens, you re-evaluate and have a chance to do something about it. You can either get better or ignore it. |
We missed a lot of open shots. There were some really good looks that we missed. |
We played a complete game at both ends of the floor, and that's what this team needed to do. It needed to play an entire game and see how good we can be. |
We played a little bit too slow, a little bit too casual, and didn't do a very good job defensively in the second half. We didn't do a good job guarding Polk. |