Andy Landers Quotations

We're right where we need to be. I'm not just saying that. Obviously, at any point in time you were watching practice, you would say, 'He's not happy.' When you look at the big picture, I couldn't ask more of them.

We're a basketball team that understands it limitations. We understand that we don't have all the cards to play that many of the other teams have. At the same time, we're a basketball team that has some very good cards to play. Shuffling those cards and dealing them in the right manner - playing with each other and playing with each others' strengths - has in fact become our team's strength.

We?re just excited to still be standing. We very much look forward to playing a very good Connecticut basketball team in the next round and have some sense of understanding about what?s involved in that task and what a challenge it?s going to be.

Let's be honest. It will be very much like a home game.

If they beat us again, then I guess you say they're better than we are. That kind of proves it. I don't see where the damage is going to be done there. So we got everything to win and nothing to lose as far as I'm concerned.

I think it was the kind of game we expected - without that last shot.

It isn't anything we haven't been exposed to before, but it will be a challenge. We'll just have to block it out. This basketball team has the ability to block it out and play.

I think there will be a surprise or two in the tournament. There were surprises in the regular season and some upsets. Regardless of records, the teams are tough. You play on a neutral floor and there will be a surprise or two.

We had great respect for them coming into the game and we leave the game with even greater respect. They gave us all we wanted. It was at times the game I feared.

There are areas where I would like for us to be better or stronger. But we are a solid team with no glaring weaknesses.

We've never had this few players playing this many minutes for this long. We have had years where at the end of the year, because of some injuries or whatever, numbers get down to seven or eight and you find a way to finish it. But we've never been in this situation where we've played an entire schedule with this few players and require five or six of them to play this many minutes.

We had to give some things up in the second half.

We did a good job with our press, not so much forcing turnovers but controlling the tempo.

We didn't lose. You lose when you go out and don't apply the talent that you have to the challenge that you have. When you do the best that you can do with what you have to do it with, you don't lose, you get beat. There's no shame in getting beat. The shame is not fighting the fight. We fought the fight.

We didn't lose. You lose when you don't go out and apply the ability and talent that you have to the challenge that faces you. When you apply yourself like we did, you don't lose. You get beat.

It was the type of game we envisioned. They're very good defensively and make you work extremely hard on offense to get what you want.

As post play goes offensively, it's been her against the world. Everybody's got two post players but us on the offensive end.

Thirty minutes is not a big number, really. And I think another way to look at it is probably every team in America has got a kid or two that averages 30, 32, 34 minutes. If one kid can do it, there's nothing wrong with four kids doing it. Our kids have handled it very, very well.

This has been a very resilient basketball team and a very focused basketball team. This is a basketball team that has really flinched. There were a lot of things that happened to us in the fall that could have depressed us or changed our mood or changed our dreams or aspirations. But that really hasn't occurred. Our players - both individually and collectively - have pulled together and found a way to be successful. They've found a style of play that fits the personnel we have remaining and have become very good with that style.

They have adequate quickness on the perimeter. They have good size and quickness on the inside.

It's been an adjustment because we're a basketball program and a staff that prides itself on working hard. But these numbers have changed the amount of work that we do and the way in which we go about doing it. Now that said, it hasn't affected the way that we play. And I credit the kids for that. We still have the ability that when it's time to pick it up, we can go hard and we can go for the duration.

Connecticut has improved a great deal since the beginning of the year in that area. They've improved in a lot of areas, but their schemes are such offensively that they're not at a nature where you take a lot of risk with the basketball. So it's going to be hard to turn them over.

They defend very, very well. I was impressed with the way they defended us.

The NCAA is a simple ordeal. Not easy, but simple. If you can win two straight games three times, you are the national champions. You want to get to the Final Four; you want to win the national championship. That is the motivation that is spoken, but the process is to win this game.

At times, it was the game we feared and, at times, it was the game we hoped for. They're very good inside and very good off the dribble and in the first half they got too much of both of those. But we settled down in the second half.

I know the final score, the margin up there, was probably 16 or 18, but it was a closer basketball game than that. They played us very well at their place a year ago. They were young. They have those players back.

I have no problems with that. That is something that I've felt would occur over a period of time as more players who played at the highest level and went through the entire process (began entering the candidate pool).

I hadn't thought of that. I guess the only reaction I have to that is I wish it was one less (today), and he was at home in the bed with the flu.

I'm very happy for Alexis because it was a definite goal of hers. She's worked very hard and played well and deserves an opportunity at the next level.

The first thing you do is try to keep your team in condition. You can't afford with two weeks off to suffer from a conditioning aspect. The second thing is that you want to stay sharp in your execution and sharp mentally, particularly in the week leading up to the tournament.