John Brady Team Quotations

We want to play well, but certainly not at the expense of playing players that aren't healthy. Our goal is for our team to be healthy for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Secondly, Tyrus can't go to a bad team in the NBA and make that team better. That would be the worst environment for him. He's 19 years old and would have to go to a veteran team. He's not ready to go and be a dominant player, not emotionally or physically.

(Ole Miss) just did everything that was necessary, but our team made plays down the stretch. When we lost the lead, I thought several players stepped up and did things well.

Old Mill is a very good team. We just went on these stretches where we couldn't score. It's tough to keep coming back from 10 down against a good team like that.

I am really proud of what our team was able to do tonight. This was good for our team to execute down the stretch and take care of the ball.

Certainly our team has a nice confident way about it right now. The execution we showed tonight and the way we shot the ball and rebounded the ball was quite good. I can't pay enough compliments to these three guys here and the rest of our team.

I don't sense it as a burden for this team to carry. It's an added bonus. ... If we can bring some people along and make them feel better from our experience ... we've got some big arms, and we'll take all of them in.

Glen told me a couple of times that he's excited to play tomorrow. I want to control that feeling a little bit and don't let it get too out of hand where he's too excited to play. Certainly, I think our team will be ready to play.

We've got to have a good team defensive effort on him. It will be about how we handle him coming off screens without the ball and how we handle him when he comes off screens with the ball. There'll be a couple of different ways that we'll try to guard him, and we'll see which one works the best as the game progresses and adjust as we go.

He's a long athletic young man who is a pleasure to coach. And he's energized our team throughout the season with plays like that throughout the course of a game. We're fortunate to have a player like that on our team.

I thought our team was being who it is, outgoing, fun, but loving and serious when they need to be. From some of the backgrounds that our players are from, there's nothing wrong with letting out the emotion.

I thought our team was a little casual to start the game and didn't play with a lot of enthusiasm. Maybe they were looking back on the Ohio State game and anticipating what we're doing on Saturday.

That first 20 minutes was as good as I've had a team play. We looked like a real basketball team for 20 minutes.

I think on any given night, any good college basketball team can beat another one, particularly in a tournament situation.

That was the best defensive effort I've had a team play.

I was proud of our team for finding a way to win a game, on the road, and handle adversity.

We played hard all night. I thought we did some very good things on the fly against a talented team tonight. I am happy with the overall effort that we gave.

We can't just use the weekly points to choose the team because if a team has one or two dominant players others in that side won't get any votes.

We were going to double team him on ball screens and not let him get a comfort zone of coming off the screen with the ball. We were going to bump him every time he tried to go through the lane. The unique thing about it, you can play good defense, but when you can play good defense aggressively as we did without fouling, I think that's a key.

We were going to double team him, follow him around the double screens that they set for him coming to the lane.

Unfortunately they've lost some close games, but I don't look at a team as good or bad if two or three games were decided by three points either way. Arkansas played really well at home against South Carolina, and we'll have to be much better than we were against Alabama.

There are times during a game when we have five freshmen on the floor. I don't know if there's a younger basketball team in the country at this level.

When we won in 1990 we had a similar set-up with most of our players back from the previous year. We had been to the state tournament before and when we got there again, we just weren't going to lose. We knew what we had to do. This team has that same kind of experience. They know what it's going to take.

We knew early on that Duke was going to try and pressure us, do what they do best and get in lanes. Our team was able to fight through that, and we scored some easy baskets on them. We did a nice job in the first five or seven minutes, and after that, they knew they would be in a contest.

We scored nine points and had 10 turnovers in the first half against a zone! When I tell the team to be patient I don't mean make 40 passes, just four. Every time we worked the ball around, we got it inside.

Florida is quite good. They're well-coached. Their talented. Their team seems to fit together well and for us to beat them we had to be, you know, at full strength.

I've always thought Arkansas was as talented as any team in the league.

This is the best group at this stage that I've had here. I anticipate this team being a very good rebounding team. We're long. We're really uncharacteristically long.

This is the best group at this stage that I've had here, ... I anticipate this team being a very good rebounding team. We're long. We're really uncharacteristically long.

It was the best defensive effort I've ever had a team play. It's something we've stressed since I've been here. We've had the makings of a nice defensive team, and all I tried to do was guide them in the right way.

I told them after the game that we were a Top 25 team and people just don't know it yet. And I really believed that because of the way we were playing with the youth that we had.

It may be a case of which team can do what they do for the longest period of time.

The biggest challenge right now is just to calm our team down. They know one more win, you're in the Final Four. I think our team is responding well to that.

It's been unfortunate for them. They lost a few close games, but I don't look at a team as a good team or a bad team based on two or three points that could have gone either way. I've always thought Arkansas was as good and as talented a team as there is in the league.

I wanted to play a good team from a different region. It's a TV game. We played at Connecticut this year, and we're going to play them at our place next year. After this one, Washington is coming to our place.

They are very smart, very tough, good basketball players who know what they are doing. They are a dangerous team in that they can score baskets easily at any given time.

That's difficult for a team to handle. That's something you don't coach; that's something you recruit.

Their team has a lot of fight in it.

Their two guards could start for anybody in our league. We're going to have to do a very good job of making our team concerned with where they are, what set they're in, who is setting the screen and what we're going to do to disrupt them, because the other three players really rely on those two guards playing well.

But I don't know of any other team in the country that's having the success at this level with players from as close by as this. We have good high school coaching in this area and state, and that's why we produce so many good players.

He's sort of like the quarterback in practice with the no-contact jersey on. ... We know we've got to avoid contact with him because if he goes down, our whole team is in dire straights.

He's probably the key to our personality of our team and how it developed over the course of the season.

Garrett Temple did a wonderful job, but our other players did a wonderful job of carrying out the plan. It was as fine an effort as I've ever had a team play.

I don't think there's a more consistent player in the league. Our team has the presence to go to him when we need to.

He plays hard, has a great body and is a scary enough shooter. He's a good defender and competitor. I like the way he plays, by what I've seen in games and on tape. He can certainly lift their team and make them play better. We'll have to pay extra attention to him, on and off the ball.

If you don't hold your team accountable then you will lose credibility and your team will be spoiled.

If you want team play, you must stress defense. Defense makes players unselfish.

And Glen challenged the team at halftime. You know what it was like being in Baton Rouge last year after we didn't win that first round game. I didn't want to experience that any more.