Dave Rose Hard Quotations

Being the last game of the night, the guys will be really anxious. Hopefully for us, everyone will come out and play hard and with a lot of energy, and we'll get settled in early.

I told them we'd come too far and worked too hard not to absolutely give our best effort out there and we needed everything we could for the remainder of the game. I don't think our guys ever did not play hard at any point in this game. We made mistakes, but they played hard and gave everything they had.

I do believe that as a competitor when somebody tells you that you're going to finish last, that doesn't sit real well with you. Hopefully our guys are going to respond to that. We don't work as hard as we do to finish ninth.

Let me tell you, that guy is really, really good. It's hard to judge how he'll do with blocked shots because he didn't have any against New Mexico in the last game, but he had 19 against us in two games. You wonder if he'll be healthy. ...You try to prepare the players for how he might help out, but at the same time you don't want to get them so nervous that they're just throwing the ball up.

It is very hard for defenders to stay in front of him. He is deceptively fast for a kid as big as he is. Rashaun gets about 27 minutes a game, sharing the point with Austin Ainge.

That felt good and it is long overdue. Our guys earned it. They played hard and tough.

We're trying to get him more involved in the offense and get him moving better. He's so much better on the move than he is just sitting down there in the post. We also worked hard on some defensive assignments and playing help defense.

You have to make perimeter shots against this team because of their size, it's just hard to get to the basket. You can't stop going to the basket. They are a team playing with a lot of confidence right now and. our guys came out really focused.

I told our guys I wanted them to do two things: play hard and be tough. We've had a tendency to let people get after us on the road but tonight we answered. As a coaching staff, we challenged Jimmy to play hard and he responded. I thought Austin Ainge also came in and got us going after we got off to a rough start. In order for us to be successful, we need Jimmy and others to be consistent like he was tonight.