Steve Ridder Quotations

We are providing Jared with some athletic scholarship monies as a small token of our appreciation and to reward him for all the work he has done.

We were a team tonight, in the truest sense of the word, because we have quality people in uniform. We don't have any ego-type players. These guys get out of bed every day trying to figure out ways to help this team.

We talked at halftime about playing the best second-half defense we have played all year. And we just clamped down.

Joseph's minutes tonight were great minutes. He's just a new dimension when he comes into a game. And Pyle showed in the way he finished plays why he's an All-American.

I think we were mentally prepared for this game. After losing the other night at Florida Memorial, we identified some areas that needed work, and we worked them--especially on the defensive end. Looks like it paid off well tonight.

We think we are way better shooters than that. So we've been investing a lot more time on that in practice.

We've had more scoring punch in the past and better athletes. I don't think our guys would disagree with that. We had to put more emphasis on defense. I think we have a chip on our shoulder a little bit. We wanted to become the very best defensive team in our history.

We tried to get more touches for Pyle in the post. He kept playing out on the perimeter in the first half.

We challenged Ben to make his contributions on defense; he was to go at (No.) 52 (Burr). Ben was a big part of that. Making that adjustment was probably the key to the game.

The seniors wanted a chance to win the conference championship in the last game and cut down the nets in their own place.

Right now we're a good team, but not great. We're not a special team yet. We think we can get there. This game is going to help us in the long run because we found something that we have to work on.

Defense has been our bread and butter this season. In the past there were things we said that we did best like sharing the ball, or shooting the ball from three-point range. But we play great team defense.

Denny had a couple of tough weeks of basketball, but he's hung in there. He's had great practices this week and there was a correlation tonight.

They played 39 minutes and 45 seconds of zone defense and controlled the tempo. We never got into the type of game we like to play. I think tonight was a great example of what can happen when we don't have a constant 3-point shooting threat.

That's a set play where (Exter) comes off a double screen. We had perfect timing and he drilled it (from the corner as he was fouled).

I'm most proud of him knocking down six of seven free throws. He had been struggling on the line. But Michael's our All-American and he showed it tonight.

I liked Ryan's shot selection. He took the ones that were there. And because they know he can shoot, they keyed on him and that gave our other guys more room to operate.

In our conference, every night is a war. Webber does a great job of coming into everybody's gym and taking it to you. I think we took a giant step tonight.