Josh Boone Game Quotations

It helps a lot but it's not just experience. It has a lot to do with conditioning and the depth of our team. The last couple of games we've really been able to just wear other teams down toward the end of the game and really start to pull away.

He played a great first half. He was scoring at will. He was finding people for the wide-open shots. He was rebounding, too. He was doing basically everything. It was almost like a Jason Kidd-type game for him.

It's great, especially in a game like that, to get a win like that against a great Kentucky team, but at the same time we still have a lot of work to do. Coming in, it was 80 minutes until Washington. Now it's 80 minutes until Indianapolis. That's what it is, and it starts with 40 minutes against Washington.

If I could put a finger on why, then I would have been not struggling by now. I might be thinking too much, but it's just kind of hard not to think about it when it just keeps happening. It's just a matter of me having that one good game and everything is going to be all right.

Rashad gave us a spark in the beginning. We had a lot of people step up tonight. This was definitely the kind of game where we needed everyone.

This game we really tried to work hard on our defense and work hard on getting to the offensive glass. We started to run a little bit more and it's one of the things we're going to have to do to be successful this year.

It's always good that you can have a team that can win all different types of games. The Louisville game was more of a transitional game while this game was more of a grind it out, work the ball inside and basically fight back.

I don?t think there?s anything that you can really build on. It?s just the knowledge that you need to approach every game like it?s the last game you?re going to play.

We're getting better every game and every day. Hopefully, it's just going to continue into this game and next weekend against Villanova.

And hopefully by that time things will be worked out. Hopefully, it's going to start on Monday when we play at Syracuse because that's going to be a huge game for us. Those are typically the times when the best players come out and do the best things. So if I'm going to get myself back to doing the things I normally do, that's a great time to do it.

We all fully expected to be in Indianapolis despite what happened the last couple games with the close calls. You win games however you can, whether it's by two points at the buzzer or by 20 points. The bottom line is we were winning games up until (Sunday). We came up one game short.

They were so tough and physical we found ourselves having to match them. That was the roughest game I've been in.

It was just a matter of being ready to play. It's a matter of being ready as soon as they throw the ball up, not waiting 10 minutes. ... I hope we look at this and realize we can't ever do this again. Because if so, that's going to be the last game for a bunch of us. This is that final wake-up call.

They're on a roll, they're playing really well and it's basically going to be a home game for them. It's going to be a little bit tougher on us, but we're going to have to put everything aside and just play basketball.

It's just a matter of seeing the situation and knowing that somebody has to step up for us to win games like this. When (South Florida) came back, somebody had to make a play, get a rebound, make a defensive stop.

There are no perfect games in the NCAA Tournament. It's just survive and advance. The bottom line is we're not going home. I was sleepwalking this morning. But you know you have to get up and do it again today.

There's going to be a whole lot of pushing, a whole lot of shoving, but that's the type of game that they like. We do play well in those type of games. We're a running team, but I think we've proven throughout this year that we can be a physical team as well. We're just going to have to prove it even more so.

Just really being stronger was important for us, and being tough on the inside. A lot of times we were able to get the ball inside in the last game but they would come in, and you've got guys slapping at the ball and everything and we were getting it taken from us. This game, we made sure as soon as we caught it we were ball-tough and that nobody could take the ball from us.

All that stuff, the Wiggins thing, the other thing, might have fueled what you saw tonight. There was trash-talking, pushing and shoving. I think the game was more intense because of that stuff.

I honestly had to force myself to watch part of the game with Syracuse and Pittsburgh. It's tough knowing it could have gone so many different ways.