Tod Kowalczyk Quotations

Whether you call it rebuilding or reloading, you're going to have those years. I was told by (someone) that if you can get 15 wins in a rebuilding year, that's a heck of a deal. So 15 wins in that situation was good.

We're going to have to do a better job defensively on Polk.

Ultimately, it comes down to a half-court game. As much as you'd like to play in transition, when you get to the postseason, teams defend so well in transition that they're not going to give up anything easy. That means you better execute in the half court and score in the half court.

We're guarding, and we've guarded all year. That's not the problem right now.

Obviously, our goal is to play in the NCAA Tournament. But if we can finish in the top three consistently, that's an unbelievable thing. We've done it three straight years.

I was surprised it didn't sell out in September.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if somebody (seeded) 4 through 9 stepped up and won this tournament.

He hit a lot of tough shots. He had one of those nights where he was in a zone.

We've got too many guys making too many turnovers. It's got to stop. Turnovers will end your season in a hurry.

Hands down, without question, he's one of the best five players in the league. I was very surprised he wasn't on that first team.

I would think that game would sell out in a very short period of time.

I think we've been in most games -- I mean besides the Youngstown game -- we should have won that Detroit game -- but the main thing is for our guys to be consistent.

It had nothing to do with him shooting 8-for-12. It had everything to do with him going to the foul line six times. If he can get to the foul line, he can score.

We played very good basketball against an athletic team. It was nice to see us get better in some areas.

We wanted to keep him yielded. Tonight I challenged Josh Lawrence, who is a very good defender, to do that.

We've been gearing for that all year, to play our best basketball down the stretch, and hopefully we do.

We played a little bit too slow, a little bit too casual, and didn't do a very good job defensively in the second half. We didn't do a good job guarding Polk.

We probably had our worst game of the year.

We've got to find a way to pursue the ball.

Early on I thought we weren't attacking the zone, playing too far out. But once we decided to start attacking the zone and playing within our shooting range, we got a lot better looks.

I've said all along this team is going to be very young, very inexperienced but very talented. This team is going to need patience from myself, from the fans and from the media.

Ryan had a great night. He is good when he's aggressive.

As a player you want to be one of those guys that's indispensable, someone you need to have on the floor at all times. He's a freshman and he's going to be a good basketball player.

It very well may be (too tough). I felt having a young team and a talented team that I wanted to challenge them early and get them to play at a high level. In order to do that, you have to play against good competition.

It's not about the future. The future is for us to be better right now. That's what we're striving for.

The key to that game was our bench. I've been disappointed, not with the play of our bench, but more so the energy and enthusiasm and emotion. We preached the last few days to be excited on the bench.

I'm really proud of how our guys gutted it out. Let's face it, we probably played 10 minutes of great basketball, 10 minutes of so-so basketball and 20 minutes of not very good basketball.

He played great. That was the best game of his career.