NIT SEASON TIP-OFF

November 24, 2004

Tommy Amaker

TOMMY AMAKER: No, the only thing we talk about it a lot, it tends to become contagious. I really believe that, we've been able to streak it out and string it out at times with free throw shooting and we've done that in three previous games. Obviously it wasn't the case for us this evening, but looking at their stats as well, I'm sure they are disappointed in their free throw shooting. We had multiple opportunities to cash in from the line and we were not able to do it.

TOMMY AMAKER: You know, we're disappointed. We battled very hard and we played a scrappy, tough game against a scrappy, tough team. I think they were battling as hard as we were and it's evident by how close the game was played. I'm sure it wasn't a very pretty game at times, but both teams are really doing everything they could to come up with a victory. Sometimes it's tough when you have a game like that and the team has to come up on the short end of the score board. But I know our kids played with great effort and gave -- just gave a great energy and tried to do everything we asked them to do to come out on top. We're disappointed but we recognize we have to get over that very quickly. Sometimes you lose a game like this in a tournament like this, it can linger and that's the thing that we have to guard against for Friday's game against Providence.

TOMMY AMAKER: Something that we knew was there, sometimes you don't know if you're going to see these kinds of things this early. But when you get in a tournament like this and this great competition, you see a lot of different things. I saw a lot of toughness in our kids. I saw a lot of toughness in their team out there. I thought it was just a battle-tested type of game, a game ordinarily you would see later in the year in Conference play or possibly in post-season. I was very pleased. We're short-handed, obviously, with one of our better perimeter players and we had great effort out of a couple freshman players, a freshman kid coming off the bench for us and kids that were non-scholarship players that just gave us great efforts on their part to battle this very, very tough Arizona ballclub.

TOMMY AMAKER: Well, I'm sure we'll try to learn from it eventually. It's kind of hard to lay that on them right now.

TOMMY AMAKER: I'm hoping, we're hoping that we'll be able to use it and use it properly and use it in the right way.

TOMMY AMAKER: Honestly I haven't had a chance to think about and watch any of the tape of Providence, but we recognize that he's one of the better players in the country and it's going to be a very, very difficult matchup for us. I've seen him play in other games and I've been very impressed with his skill level, his patience, his poise. I just think it's going to be a tough thing for us, especially coming off of an emotional gut-wrenching loss in overtime tonight.

TOMMY AMAKER: We are going to do everything we possibly can, but we have not had a chance to study how we'll contain him at all yet.

TOMMY AMAKER: I'm not sure that we'll be happy looking back on this game; but, no, to answer your question. I'm not sure if when we look back on it we'll be happy.

TOMMY AMAKER: Still rehabbing, and we're hopeful that at some point he's going to be able to get back to the point where we can put him out on the court. Right now we didn't think that was a wise move tonight and so we're hopeful for Friday.

TOMMY AMAKER: I thought the way Chris and Brent were playing, I thought that was the reason we were right there with Arizona. But they did a great job, those two kids out there. And we went with them all the way and they gave us great minutes.

TOMMY AMAKER: The play when Horton drove the ball? We wanted to put it in his hands and see if we could create something and hopeful we could have created a shot or a foul. Neither really -- well, he got a shot off, but it wasn't a great look. I thought they did a great job of defending us without fouling. That's a hard thing to do when you open the floor like that and you try to isolate one player, and sometimes you get a bump call or a hand check. And I thought they played great defense. It's a credit to their team and their coaches.