Coach Pearl was telling me about a game versus Wisconsin he had. He said that was one of the few leads he’s lost in his coaching career. We’re picking up on the coaches’ mentality, and...

You want to be playing your best basketball at this time of the year.

I haven’t been around a locker room that silent and depressed in a long time. You really don’t take much good out of this. But maybe it’s good we have this feeling right now, because...

Even when we started to get a double-digit lead, we were still playing a little sloppy, and they were getting some easy buckets. We’ve got to step up and bring the energy every game if...

You get excited when you see the No. 2 next to your name. But when you realize what a capable team Winthrop is, when we look deep into the scouting report, you realize that no...

I know I wouldn’t trade him for anybody else in the league. You can’t count all the things he does to make everybody else around him look better.

We just dug ourselves too big a hole in the first half. Coach (Pearl) puts defense and rebounding on the board before every game, and we haven’t been able to do that consistently.

This game had become an event. The students have been talking about this like it was a football game.

We’re well aware of that game. It was a CBS game, and it actually hurt us this year when Coach Pearl was trying to get us some air time.

I think we were in a position where we had them where we wanted them. I guess we just didn’t execute. I’m not sure really what happened.

It’s amazing. People are starting to treat it like a football game. Girls are saying they have to buy some new clothes or a new shirt for the game, and they’re talking about how early...

It was kind of funny, buttons were flying everywhere. We all laughed and gave him a Gatorade bath in there.

You can definitely make the case that this was good for us, the way it turned out. Coach says the teams we play obviously will continue to get better, but the situation we were in...

We started to celebrate on the court, and he told us to act like we’ve been there before. Then we get to the locker room, and he rips his shirt off and buttons are flying...

Coach gets his point across. Major will be fine. It’s not just on him. It’s on everybody.

It was more than a statement game. It was a championship game for us. We wanted to control our destiny.

That’s how each opponent is going to view us now going down the stretch. It’s down to the wire for a lot of people, and they need a big win. We’ve got to realize we...

Hold on, we’ve got to see this.

Both games, they were right there with us. Just because you beat a team twice during the regular season doesn’t mean they’re the same team.

It’s great to be such a high seed. Now we need to go play that way.

Even when we had a double-digit lead, it felt like we were a little sloppy. We weren’t playing to the best of our ability and it came back to haunt us. But give Arkansas credit....

The first option was Andre [Patterson].

We can make this a very special season, or we can almost be looked at as somewhat of a fallout ? a team with a great season, but weren’t able to win the big games...

I still feel I have something to prove. I just want to continue to take advantage of the opportunities I have.

I told everyone to treat this like your senior year because you don’t know what next year will bring. To be in this situation and have this opportunity is a real blessing for us all.

I was pretty sure I knew where Chris was going.

I think we had three defensive rebounds in the first half, which is unheard of. We had (41) points at halftime, so we were on pace offensively. Obviously, though, the whole key was defense and...

We’ll come in for timeouts, and he’ll say, ‘Let’s try this,’ and it will work.

This will benefit us in the long run in the tournament. We’ve faced every type of adversity throughout the season. We’ve been down before and lost leads. Now, we’re ready for tournament play.

I got a little tight.

A couple of more minutes of solid basketball and we’re talking about the Sweet 16.

This is the most special place on the road for me. In my mind, I know that I’ve won at Kentucky. It’s something that goes on the career resume.

No team is 100 percent right now. That’s the part of the game you have to battle through. It’s about mental toughness.

I was able to get Chris on a curl. Major Wingate [15 points] set him a pretty good screen and opened him up just enough.

I didn’t even realize I did it twice until someone pulled me aside and told me.

I was never referring to the city of Memphis or the players. I should have used better terminology. I love the city and the program.

Coach is not afraid to crack a joke in the huddle with 30 seconds left. There’s just something about it, it’s hard to explain. But there’s a feeling that even if we’re down with 40...

We’ve all just learned so much from (Pearl), and we’re a reflection of him on the court. He’s working just as hard as we are on the sidelines, and we’re just very fortunate to have...

Nobody expected us to get this far. It hurts now because we think we should’ve made the Sweet 16, but we accomplished a lot.