For whatever reason, they haven't played as well as they did at the start of the year. In December, I thought they were clearly one of the favorites in the league, and that hasn't changed. They're an extremely talented, capable opponent, and one of those teams that is looking to get hot and have as good a chance as any to contend in the conference championship. |
Freddy is the definition of a leader. He's a calming and focusing influence and he fights every game, every step of the way. |
He's been through a lot in this program and he has tremendous veteran leadership. He's always been a clutch guy. |
He's done a lot better job of taking what defenses give him and his turnovers are down as a result. He's not trying to force things. His defense is great and he's fourth in the league in steals, and certainly his rebounding is improved as well. |
He's had games where he can show what he can do, but because of injuries, he's been the number one target of every defense. That's why I would say maybe we haven't seen what he can really do when he's not the focal point for every defense. |
He's seen it all. He's played in two [America East] championship games. He knows all the rivalries, what we expect from our guys on and off the court and what it takes to get where we want to go. |
He's the X-factor across the board. He can play with anybody in our rotation, and he can play from the two to the five, and even point guard or center in short minutes. |
His loss is very difficult to replace in numerous ways. |
I felt like since Christmas we've played very good offensively, shooting about 50 percent, and we've been focusing on getting our defense back to where it belongs and having Phil back tonight certainly helped give us good balance. |
I felt we really played 40 minutes defensively. When you do that you?re eventually going to be able to get some transition buckets. |
I give our guys a lot of credit for playing to this level after the last game. We came in with a huge focus on defense and rebounding, and we had a good effort there. |
I just wanted to make sure they started the clock on time. |
I think that's one of the reasons they're as good as they are is they have great depth. Sure, it hurts them not having him out there, but we knew they were a team in particular that was deep enough to handle those kinds of problems. |
I think the reason he's such a good leader is because he does both. He's not afraid to be vocal with anyone on the team. He takes a lot of pride in not just showing, but speaking, too. |
I think we kind of got away from some of the things that we had success from when those shots started going in. I think we took some shots we haven't been taking as much and making some turnovers. |