Courtney Sims Quotations

I got a whole bunch of money, about $300. I've got to pay bills.

When he was struggling early in the year, he would come and talk to me about it. I tell him to take his shot. He's very unselfish on the floor, and I tell him to be more selfish on the floor and look for his shot more.

We have to be confident, but we have to be aware that State has their backs against the wall and they're going to want this win badly. They're going to want to be a contender in this conference, so they're going to need this win.

I was just trying to be aggressive, and I just wanted to be a presence out there.

I was trying to be more of a presence on defense. I wanted to be more active.

It feels good that we won and I helped us win. I was just trying to be aggressive out there.

That's what hurt us. It's hard playing an extra 35 seconds on defense.

We have to stay hungry. Our goal wasn't just to be ranked. Our goal is to win a Big Ten championship. We feel we're as good as anyone in the country.

We needed the momentum to play Michigan State and have a lot of confidence.

We're excited about it. Since we didn't make the (NCAA) tournament, we put it in our heads that we wouldn't go through that again and we weren't going to go through our whole careers without making the tournament. The people who are going to be back, we work well together. ... Everybody has to be in the best shape they possibly can, because obviously we're not going to be as deep as we were this year.

We knew that the team that put together three to four stops was going to win the game, and they did that.

We keep coming close. We came close at Indiana, we came close at Illinois. We have to get past this little ? I don't know what it is ? and win some games.

To be in first place is really hard to comprehend, but it feels great. Last year we were getting beat bad and now this.

We've got to correct that. We let teams get a lot of threes and get it going. Once they get it going, even if you put a hand up, they're going to start lining up. We've got to correct that with ball screens and helping with stuff like that.

We weren't executing in the first half and their (slow down) style of play kind of bothered us. Coach was on me about being more aggressive offensively and I listened to him.

We feel we can be ranked higher than what we are. Our goal wasn't to be ranked at the beginning of the year, it was to win the Big Ten championship. We think we can be up there with the best of them. We feel we have just as much talent as anybody in the country.

We say that all the time, that when teams come in here, they always have the best shooting day. We let teams get going, and once they get going, it's hard to stop somebody.

I've been sick for the last couple of games, and just not feeling good or eating much. Tonight, I felt like I could play a lot and be productive out there, and it's good to have my health and strength back.

I've been a little under the weather the last two games but now I'm getting my strength back. It felt really good to be out there helping the team.

This isn't a good feeling. We've been wanting to get respect, but you have to earn it. Today we didn't earn it.

It was good to get my strength back, my health back.

I just have to play as hard as I can when I get in there. I kind of expected this. Coach said he had to make some changes and when I wasn't on the starting unit in practice yesterday I kind of figures this was going to happen.

I just knew I had to produce to help make this team be good. If I can produce, this team we have can be real dangerous.

I realize I can get points off the glass. When teams are taking me away on the offensive end, I can get them off the glass, so I've been concentrating on that in practice.

I don't really know, it could go both ways. We have experience going through the NIT. But we've been through it and we wanted to make another step, a bigger step. We can either hang our heads or try to finish it, the way Coach said.

The little things in the first half, I think that's what lost the game for us. We had silly turnovers, fouls on 3-point shooters, not blocking out (Brian) Randle and stuff. Stuff like that, we need to toughen up.