Billy Donovan Tried Quotations

We felt like Darrel Mitchell was the key to their team, so we tried to run at him and trap him as much as we could. When he gets his 18 or 19 points, everything else falls into place.

Our guys have really tried to work hard at it.

Those three losses, to be honest, I felt pretty encouraged. I just didn't want our guys to get down. I wanted them to see 'Hey listen, this is what we're giving up, and we're losing in overtime and losing by 2 to 3 points. Imagine if we shore this up, how good we can be.' That was kind of the message I tried to give them during that time.

We tried to make them score outside their offense. We gave up 10 offensive rebounds in the first half, but in the second half I felt like their frontcourt was fatigued.

We just tried to continue to attack and mix up our defenses. I told our guys this game would come down to the same things we've been doing all year - unselfishness, making the extra pass and being able to defend and rebound.

Everybody talks about the end result. You're playing for the national championship. I think the only experience I tried to use from 2000 was, you've got to want this night to last as long as you can. You've got to want them to put more time on the clock. You've got to love playing.

If you do the same thing against those guys every single time down the floor, they're eventually just going to pick you apart. So we just tried to change. We tried to get some weak-side help sometimes. We got up in the lane to try to discourage post feeds. We tried to get around and front.