I’m excited, pleased, happy, motivated, and want to do well up there again.

Sam Young is the guy that turned the game with his offensive rebounding. He really was a big factor in the game.

I don’t know how to explain it, particularly in light of the fact that we lost nine straight times to them coming into the season.

They’ve got two trophies. They’ve got two championships to end their career on. Rocky has been with us two years, and he’s two-for-two. You can’t do any better than that.

When you put down goals that you have and things that you want to do and things that you want to accomplish, that was not something that we put down and said we’re going to...

That was a big one for them last night.

There’s only so much you can do about it.

In the end, it comes down to you have to play good in the games.

Unfortunately, Noah’s size and arm length and sense for the game, and he’s got a great sense for the game, won out. He was there when the ball was deflected or missed and put it...

We’re much better than two weeks ago, and the reason is hard work. We’re not doing anything strategically different; we just doing it better.

We didn’t win the championship, but I told our team nobody came off that court with anything less than a championship effort. That’s what you really want. And our kids gave a championship effort.

Dwayne’s pass across court, that’s when I felt we would win it. Getting that (ball) out of harm’s way, I felt we had it then.

Two practices in a row is hard for him because of the swelling. We’re trying to move him along somewhat incrementally in hopes that we can get a whole season out of him.

It was a senior night.

Sparks plays extremely well on the road, particularly in big games. We’ve got to be wary of that.

We’re really right where we were at most of the year. The difference being, when trouble comes, and it will, we don’t have a bench to go to if the trouble lurks in the post....

We didn’t play bad the first half. We just did not shoot well. When you don’t shoot well, you don’t look good.

There is a sense of urgency with me, with our staff and our team. I can’t say it any more clear than that — urgent as in now. Let’s do it now. Urgent is not...

It was no secret who was going to get the ball, unless Pat Riley showed up.

Nobody wants his legacy to be: ‘He was a great NIT coach.

I’m not going to sit here and say they’ve got one more game in them, or two more, or whatever.

Sometimes you can force it to move along, sometimes you can’t. What you’ve got to do is keep coaching, keep loving and keep kicking. You keep doing those three things, and eventually it will work...

It was a difficult day for us. We never got in sync offensively. We never got out of the box offensively at all.

We’re going to play everything we’ve got to try and win one game. I’ll figure out something else for the second one. I hope that’s a problem that I have no answer for. I hope...

We couldn’t play any better tonight than we played. You can always do something better, but given it’s a championship-level game against truly one of the great coaches and he’s playing in his hometown, to...

We’re probably not catching them at a great time, but our guys want to win too.

If not for golf that day, I don’t know if he’d of known about us wanting to do that.

Only Tubby knows where that’s headed. We’ve got to prepare for their whole roster and nobody has the kind of depth they have. They can roll through five until they find something that works.

I thought we would win then because we got it out of trouble. We’d been turning it over. Getting that thing out of harm’s way I thought was maybe the turning point.

Nobody talked to him more. Nobody knew his high school coach more. Nobody had him on their campus more. Nobody offered him sooner. As to why he chose to go out of state, only he...

Tennessee will play better in the NCAA tournament than they played today as most teams do at this level … because what happens is you get away from people that know you best.

I think what we saw tonight was two teams that played hard, but it wasn’t a pretty game. They were trying so hard to win. They locked themselves up. We were tight. We couldn’t pass...

When we’ve played well, he’s done well.

If you’re not ready to play against a team like that, it can come back and bite you.

I don’t think it helped us at all. There’s no doubt in my mind this league is going to get six (teams in the tournament). It deserves at least six. I don’t think we’ll get...

It doesn’t bother me. An occasional 3 to put a question in the opposing team’s mind, I think that’s OK.

We’re nine and six. Nobody expected that, least of all me. Are they OK? No, they’re not OK. ‘OK’ is that you’re confident and you’re playing well together. … That’s ‘OK,’ and that’s not happening.

A lot had been made about the fact that we had been on the road for an extended period of time. I did not receive any cards of sympathy from the other coaches or the...

He had his day with me; I had my day with him. Those were good days. It was a good time in our lives. I’m very proud of the fact that I coached him.

As proud as I was of our team during the four games last week, I was just as proud tonight that they were able to come back with minimal practice, minimal rest and play as...

I think it’s a good rule. I do think you might find three (or) four teams (with losing records in the NIT). I don’t think that’s bad. I think it would be bad if you...

He’s really persevered, done a great coaching job with great class and great dignity. You could see the warmth he received, he received it with great humility. No chest bumping or all of that. I’m...

You have to be concerned with him. You can’t come down on guys like [Randolph] Morris and the other giants, and you’ve got to stay out on them. It is particularly difficult with a team...

Now I feel like we’re in the tournament. We’ll be fresh next Tuesday.

Billy and I were able to shake hands after the game and he had some nice complements about how our administration made efforts to protect the court.

I enjoy the NIT. I don’t know if anyone wants their legacy to be he was a great NIT coach, but by the same token, when you’re given the opportunity to play in the tournament,...

(Downey)’s exciting to watch, much like an Allen Iverson is. We’ve to make sure we don’t watch him, we guard him. James White, we know about because he played at Florida. He has a propensity...

Against a team like that. It just doesn’t happen.

This was not an elimination game for us. But in our last four games, we’ve got to play much, much better than we did today.

We’ve had an excellent two days of practice and I think our team is in about as good a frame of mind as it has been in a long time. I think the pressure of...