Shane Battier Good Quotations

We've put in a good body of work. It's time to take it to a higher gear.

I'm happy for him. He's a good dude. He's a hard worker and he has a great basketball mind. He took his last school to the dance. I think it's a good hire for Oklahoma.

I thought we played good enough to win, but Elton willed them to victory.

It's always good to have one of these games before a day off. We ran the floor well and our defense made them have to take some tough shots.

It's one thing to play well on a bad team. But it's better to play well on a good team. You have to be a vital cog (to be considered) and Mike is.

We have played well in April (8-1). That hasn't been the case in the last two years. The main focus has been to play well and go into the playoffs with some momentum. Obviously, Dallas is playing good as well. It's a big challenge, but it's a challenge that should be fun.

It's not that complicated. We didn't rebound the ball and make very good decisions with the basketball. Now, it's about making basketball plays. Basic basketball plays. The older guys keep telling us it's not the national championship game. It's a series. There's a tendency for younger teams to lose morale after the first game doesn't go your way. We're a pretty positive group and that comes from experience.

They're really good here. They get out on the break, and they get the crowd involved. It's tough to beat them, and unfortunately we couldn't get it done here again this year.

This was probably the toughest game of the year. We're proud of ourselves. We could have packed it in when they made a run and just said 'we're going to lose this one.' But good teams don't make excuses. They find ways, and we want to keep this thing rolling.

They did a good job of using that as motivation. I think we let up a little bit and didn't take advantage of having their best player out of the game.

They did a good job of using it (Garnett's ejection) as motivation to play harder. And we let up a bit. We didn't do a good job of taking advantage of their best player being out.

We haven't been a very good team this year when major guys are missing from the other team. They don't keep statistics for that but I know we haven't been very good.

We feel good about where we are right now. We feel we're playing good basketball.

We feel good about ourselves. We feel that we have played well in April, which has not been the case the last two years.

We all know we didn't have our best showing. They're really good here and they have a lot of confidence here.

If you don't feel good about yourself, you're not going to play good basketball. I don't care who you are. We've accomplished what we wanted by playing solid basketball in April. At the end of the day, it's about what you do; if you execute.