Jeff Ackermann Quotations

I told the kids before the game that when you can count on one hand the number of teams that have done something, then you know you are truly approaching greatness.

We use our bench to help impose our will.

Brian Walsh is a very, very good player. He has a chance to be (an NCAA) Division I player. He has terrific skills.

(Brian's) the best sophomore I've ever coached. He's got tremendous skills. He has true mark of a Division I player. He can do things that you can't coach. He jumps out of the gym, he can shoot and handle, plus he's long and athletic. I'm glad I have him for two more years.

I'm happy, but I'm tired, exhausted and emotionally drained.

I told our guys that they have a chance to make their own history and not live off our old history. This is their chance to be a part of it themselves.

Jumping out to the early lead was probably just more of us being experienced in this game.

We knew they were big, but we wanted to press them the entire game. Even if we got beat a few times, we were going to press. We missed a few shots early, but then they started to fall for us.

We knew they were big and they had a lot of girth to them, so we wanted to try to wear them out the best we could. Our guys knew we were going to press the whole game, we weren't going to ease up and, if they scored on it, we were fine with that because we wanted to get an up-tempo game as much as we could.

I was happy to be up 12 points. But, you know and I know that Hampton wasn't going to go away. Everyone knew they were going to battle back and be there at the end. They have tough kids and you knew they were going to fight back and do whatever they needed to do to be in that game at the end.