For us to be a conference contender, we've got to be a better team defensively. You can't give up (35) points in the first half and expect to win. Our offense played well, but didn't get the stops when we needed to.
This is huge for our program. This really shows the growth we went through as a team this year. We are really confident, because as I told our kids, our conference is so good that we can compete with anybody nationally.
I think we're right there on the cusp (of being very good). It's just a matter of us staying with it. We need to keep doing the things we've been doing, and we need to do the little things to be successful.
The guys are disappointed now because we came so close and had a great opportunity to win the game at the end. But I think in time the hurt will go away and they will appreciate what they did.
It was a struggle, but it was a good struggle. I'm not sure we played our ?A' game, but we certainly had our ?A' competitiveness.
As I watched, it didn't seem like they missed.
Marcus is the guy I want to have on the line in that situation. And I think he wants to be on the line in that situation. I give him a ton of credit. Unless you've been in that situation, you don't know what it's all about.
I thought we were out of character on offense. Calvin did a great job of disrupting our rhythm and we didn't have a good flow.
We did a better job of getting the ball down low. I thought the first half we weren't quite ready to play. We needed to be ready right from the get-go.
I told them not to hold their breaths, but that we had an outside shot at an at-large bid. It was just a matter of the right teams winning their conference tournaments to make sure there are enough at-large bids left.
