They came at us like a heavyweight fighter, punched us in the mouth and we took it. They came to play at 7 o'clock and we came to play at 8. |
They guarded us, and they played physical and they out-toughed us in the first half. But we started playing a little harder down the stretch. |
They were very good in transition, and that's what we talked about was the key to the game -- if we could keep them out of transition. |
They're exceptional on the offensive end, they change defenses a lot, and they're well coached. |
They're playing with a lot of confidence. When you lose a guy who is a player of the year candidate, usually your season goes the other way. That guy can coach. There's no question Dana Altman's one of the best in the country. |
They're saying Northern Iowa is a lock and they've got seven losses in our league and we have six. That's a huge credit to our kids. |
This league has changed drastically. We were always in the high teens (in RPI ranking). It's a national league now. |
Tony Boyle came in right away and challenged (Evansville forward) Matt Webster physically. |
We are just worrying about us. We are going to make them play the way we play. We are still going to grind it out, take their stuff away, be patient and take the breaks when we can. |
We can't just be happy about getting in. When you get complacent about getting in, you're done in the first round. Obviously, if we want to validate what our league is, you better have somebody get past the first weekend so we don't have guys on the national news programs saying, 'I told you so. |
We can't panic. I'm not going to panic as a coach. We've got to make sure these guys understand what's at stake. |
We complained about calls. We complained about being bumped, when that's how we play. |
We don't have a senior on scholarship. Every chance he plays another game - every chance our whole team plays another game - allows us to get better and allows us to see where we can head as a team. I think that was impressive for these guys to be down and then to fight back and come away with a victory. |
We fouled way too much. And they were fouls. It wasn't the fact where we were getting screwed. We fouled. (We had) way too many fouls to give them way too many shots. |
We got panicked, and our youth showed. |