Billy Donovan Won Quotations

Our schedule has been balanced. There are generally times when you have to play those guaranteed games. You wonder what it does to the mindset of your players, but we've played on the road at Providence and Miami and up in New York against Syracuse and Wake Forest. I think we've been tested.

Hopefully, it's the era that Florida won a lot of games in. They are fine. It's more drawing attention to our league.

One of the biggest things to stop is momentum. There are always teams that can get on a roll. Some people say that if you have won 15 games in a row, it's good to take a loss into the (NCAA) tournament. Other people say that if you lose a game, your confidence level is lower, that you are not going into the tournament playing your best. I always say that just because you lose, you can still play well. You can get beat by a better team.

When you talk about college careers and guys in the Big East, and you put not only their numbers and their stats, but add on top of that the fact that they have won as much as they have won, I think you can throw them in there with any guards that have played in the league.

Tonight, we won because of our defense and they didn't shoot the ball particularly well. I would say it was a combination, that we did at times challenge their shots, and there were maybe also some shots they just didn't knock down.

We had won 17 games, but going into tonight we were 0-0. I knew Duke had lost, but these are different guys. They are more wrapped up in trying to become a good team, to become better individually and really sacrifice for one another.

I'm not really worried about how many games back we are. Even if we would have won tonight, Tennessee is still in control.

I know little about what is going on at Kentucky. I've seen them play almost not at all. Tubby is a wonderful man and a terrific coach who will continue to succeed.

I think sometimes when you win people think you're not challenged, but I don't necessarily agree with that. (Wake Forest and Syracuse) were won by five points, then we went to Miami and with two minutes to go in the game the score was tied. Sometimes people think if you win, it's been all easy. I think our guys have had to grind out games and find ways to win some games. I'd rather learn through winning than losing.

In the first half, offensively, we were just OK. We won because we played well defensively and we rebounded pretty well.