Brad Brownell Quotations

He looked like Larry Bird out there for the first five minutes.

I thought our team was ready. I would have never anticipated this. We worked hard the last two days and it didn't show. We lost it completely in the first half. East Carolina was better prepared and a better team today. We just didn't defend the ball as well as we needed and we over helped at times and gave open looks.

I understand we blew a big lead. But we played at an unbelievably high level to get that lead. You look at our field goal percentage ... I don't know of any team in the country that's going to play that way for 40 minutes.

I really challenged our guys in the locker room before the game, especially our seniors. Beckham did an outstanding job of talking to the guys in the locker room, and getting them motivated a little bit, and it was the difference in the game.

I thought we really played about as well as we could play in the first half.

We are having a pretty good year. The year started off great. It was a nice tournament win for us. Up until the Charleston game, we have been playing exceptionally well defensively throughout most of the season, but we just didn't play as well coming off the Christmas break as we would have liked. Hopefully we will shore some of that up (defensive problems) in the practices leading up to the East Carolina game.

We didn't do anything in particular that was overly ingenious, we just went out there and guarded them.

It's been a good series. Both teams have played well, so I look for a good game on Saturday.

We've kind of been beneath the radar all year. People haven't talked about us that much.

Hopefully that experience will give our guys confidence. Hopefully it will help that they played against a big-name team and played well.