Look what Syracuse did; they couldn't have played any worse against DePaul a week ago and they just won four great games. Anything can happen this time of year. |
Louisville played excellent and they played hard. It was a very hard, intense battle, one of the most intense battles I've ever been associated with. They had a couple more big plays than we did at the end. |
Matt has great instincts for the game and an ability to play without the basketball and can make mid-range and long-range jump shots. Each time we saw him play through the recruiting process we knew he'd be a good fit for Marquette. To be able to get one of the West Coast's finest player is exciting for our program. |
Maybe 10, but I'm biased. When you go against Seton Hall, you see Cincinnati. When you see these teams on a day-in, day-out basis, you see how good they are. |
Most of us who played against them expected them to be pretty good. That's a credit to Bob and Andy. They haven't stopped pushing and shoving when the shots go up and they're one of the best weak-side rebounding teams, especially offensively, in America. |
No question about it, Pitt earned the victory by really beating us on the boards. We played with a lot of heart today, but when you lose the rebounding war by 15 you're going to have a lot of trouble. |
Not only does he care about the basketball team and the athletic department but he cares about the entire school. Every time I've been with him I have felt honored to be around him and he takes his role with the team very serious. |
Our fans have been fantastic. Our home crowd is huge to us and we haven't seen it in a while. |
Our guys did a great job playing the style of basketball St. John's plays. They are an incredibly aggressive team. They are very athletic and physical. |
Our guys gave everything they had today. I've never been around a group of guys that sold out for each other like they did in the second half. It was an amazing run. |
Our players are building mental toughness. It's really hard with a young team. It's very hard to close teams out in a close game. The more that you get experience at it and the more you learn from the experience is when you don't do it is where it can really help you. |
Playing 40 minutes of defense was the absolute key. We thought last week that we played about 20 minutes of solid defense, and we lost our defensive intensity in the second half. |
Steve Novak has tremendous courage. Two weeks ago he hit a shot to win the game. Today the shot didn't go down. |
That hurts us. There's no doubt about it. I really feel bad for him because he's making so much progress. |
The area where Pitt really beat us was on the boards. We played well offensively. We played well defensively. We just didn't do enough on the backboard. |