BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 7, 2001

Tommy Amaker

Samuel Dalembert

Darius Lane

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: Thought it was a great win for our program. I felt we used the last game that we played in the regular season, we used it very well. I thought effort was tremendous. You have to play with great energy and effort against St. John's. You look at the stats, we turned the ball over 26 times. They had 26 offensive rebounds. Shows you how hard they played, how difficult they make it for you to get anything easy. I just thought that the effort that our big kids provided right off the bat with Sam and Eddie, you know, was a big difference in the game. I thought an inside game on both ends with their scoring ability and certainly with their ability to block shots and change the game certainly helped us. Then you talk about the effort of Ty Shine coming off the bench, it was tremendous.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: Well, I think given where we've been this year, just to have leadership would be great.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: Well, it's very difficult. I think when you see the big fella here on my left, you know, when he comes with the kind of energy that he had today and his ability to change the game, I just think that he's a force on the inside. And, you know, when he plays that way with that kind of energy, it just brings about a tremendous amount of confidence on our team. And I think that contributed a lot to their shooting percentage. I mean, I thought they missed some shots that they're ordinarily going to make, but I think you have to give a lot of credit to our inside kids with Sam and Eddie, changing the game and blocking shots.

SAMUEL DALEMBERT: I mean, I wouldn't need that momentum a long time ago. I feel great and I just went for it without hesitation. I think that's it, that was the key for me psychologically to be in the game.

DARIUS LANE: I think the Connecticut game gave us a lot of, you know, a lot of confidence getting that win, and it brought us together. You know, we had an up and down season so far, but I think we're coming together every day in practice, in games, too. But I think that gave us a lot of confidence.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: I think it's certainly one of the better efforts, because we had to have mental toughness from tap to buzzer. St. John's is a team that's never going to quit, never going to die. We had a lead for most of the game but you can certainly tell that things could change very quickly. We had a lot of turnovers, we didn't handle the ball as well, didn't shoot free throws very well. You have to give them credit, they keep coming at you. I thought our kids had a tremendous amount of toughness to withstand their rallies.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: I really think a lot of things about the game can very well -- and I've said this all year and I fully believe this, it can become contagious. I think that's certainly what happened with us. We had a few guys to go there early, didn't make them. It kind of snow balls that way. I think it can happen the other way, too. I feel very confident that we're going to be able to bounce back and shoot free throws much better.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: Well, I think when you take a look at our season as a whole, I think as Darius said, we had some ups. It wasn't so much a wipeout of a year. I think sometimes it was portrayed that way, that we were just in complete disarray. We never believed that. We felt we didn't play as well as we wanted to play most of the year but we thought we did some nice things in good stretches. Even though we may have lost some games, we still felt we did some really good things. It took our kids to be able to hang together, stay tough together, not listen to outside forces to believe we still have good players, we still have a good system and we'll battle our way through it. I thought the last couple of games our kids have displayed that attitude.

COACH TOMMY AMAKER: We need to get rest. I think that's one of the keys. We play in the afternoon. We play the second game of the first session. And we certainly are going to play against a team that is one of the better teams in country, and their depth. We're very concerned about our fatigue going against their depth. They're going to be very fresh. We think it's going to be a big challenge for us, we'll need a little luck.

DARIUS LANE: I mean, Coach gets on me about playing defense. Sometimes I tend to relax, relying on Eddie and big Sam in the back court. But, you know, I think everybody, you know, played good defense on our team, you know, came out. We didn't want to rely on Sam and Eddie blocking all the shots, we don't want to get them in foul trouble. So, you know, we just try to play hard defense every night.

DARIUS LANE: Like Coach said, it gets us rolling. Everybody gets intense. Everybody has passion for the game, and, you know, we feed off that, you know. That gets us going when Sammy and Eddie is blocking shots. It gets us rolling.