Scott Skiles Points Quotations

We kind of felt at halftime it was one of our poorer halves in quite a while. But it was a great second half for us. We were much more aggressive defensively and had at least 25 points off turnovers. It was a quality win against a team playing as well as anyone in the league right now.

Our defense kept us in the game. It was reminiscent of the way we won so many games last year. There are always points in the game when you struggle a little offensively. You hope it doesn't come at the end of the game. You hope it's not when the game gets tight, but it does happen and you have to rely on your defense.

They made three's but the free throw disparity we could not overcome. We had a lot of head-hanging and guys feeling sorry for themselves. There are points in the game where there is a simple choice: you fight or you bleed. We did not fight our way out of it.

You could see it coming in our posture and the way we were handling ourselves out there. It was inevitable they were going to make some kind of run. There was no way we were going to run away from them. There are points in the game where you have a choice to make. Either fight or flee.

After it got to seven points our guys just hung in there. Our guys were fatigued after last night's game, so I'm really proud of how they all battled.

We gave them 29 points off our turnovers, 27 second-chance points and 25 free throws. When they made a run at us and pressured us, we didn't have much poise.

We just gave them 25 points off turnovers and it's tough to win when you do that. I'm concerned about this one good half, one bad half routine, one good quarter, one bad quarter that we've been in and just the carelessness with the ball. And, a lack of respect for the basketball out there was pretty amateurish.

It wasn't like we had a total letdown or anything; we just softened up enough to let him get going. And once he got going, it was very difficult to get any momentum back. Early in the third, we went under a couple of times on screens. He made one, and that really opened his eyes. He put one right in the middle. That's a lesson that needs to be learned -- playing against great players like that, just one possession can get them going. Obviously, if you look at the whole year, the four games we played them, he's averaged well over 30 points against us. We didn't get it done against him this year.