No matter how difficult it might be, there's a lot of character in that locker room. I've seen teams climb out of holes and there's no one in that locker room that is turning their back. |
Not a whole lot of people like us, which is OK. We need to circle the wagons and keep playing. It's like us against the world. Who knows, they may can me, but I'll feel good about what we're doing. |
Obviously we'd like to be winning, but we're not right now. We've got to keep working; there's some things we can do. |
Obviously, we had a very small margin for error against a team of Illinois' caliber. They showed us how good they are. |
Our margin for error is not really large for any game. And against these guys, it is even smaller. |
That kind of turned everybody's thinking on their head. I still think it's going to be tough to win on the road, but this might be one of those years where it's just so equal that you can throw that out the window. |
The competition picks up, but it's good to get a win and build some confidence while doing that. |
The only redeeming thing about it is it's the first game. I'm stunned with our effort and togetherness. |
The turnovers are still frustrating. It didn't hurt us tonight on the scoreboard, but that's something that will continue to cost us ball games if we're not better. |
There certainly is frustration. As a coach I want my team to play better and I know I'm responsible for that. But until that question poses itself, I'm going to say my party line: It's not about me, it's about our team and trying to win games. |
There's humility all over our program. We've been through a lot coming back from the Illinois game getting beat like we did. We don't need to remind ourselves of that every day, but that's clearly in the back of their minds. And these guys, they're hungry. They want to accomplish something. |
Thomas was going to have a game like this. People are going to key on him. Our other guys are just going to have to develop, they'll have to give him some help. |
Tucker took the game over. No matter who guarded him, he was tough for us to handle. |
We felt to win the game tonight we'd have to rebound with them, we'd have to really guard them and we'd have to make some shots. I think the first half we really played great defense. ... We did not play well offensively. |
We get a chance to play this team again. Hopefully we can do more than just bounce back. |