Billy Donovan Shoot Quotations

Obviously as a freshman, without question he was not only one of the best freshmen in the league, but was one of the better players in the league. He's got great size. He can shoot over top of people. He makes every difficult shots.

Get out there and make him a driver, let's see how many times he can finish going to the basket. We allowed him to do what he does well, and that's shoot the basketball.

I was a defensive stopper. I shut guys down. I didn't shoot much.

Statistically, that was the key to the game. We shoot 49 percent on the road, you're not going to get much better than that.

Our bench has done good. I really believe if I could have control of when they shoot the ball, our bench making shots and giving our bench production, we would do it. But I'm not concerned about that. I'm more concerned about the type of shots we're getting.

When you shoot like we did and the other team is shooting 71 percent from 3-point range, you expect to be down 15 or 20 points.

I've often said the greatest equalizer in college basketball is the 3-point line. They outscored us by 12 from the 3-point line. Our inability to limit them to one shot and inability to guard the 3-point line cost us. Anytime a team can come into your building and shoot 53 percent from the field and 47 percent from the 3-point line, you have to have a very, very good night on offense.

Tonight, we won because of our defense and they didn't shoot the ball particularly well. I would say it was a combination, that we did at times challenge their shots, and there were maybe also some shots they just didn't knock down.

The biggest thing for David is to make good decisions and play very hard. There are some games, athletically, where what David can do is stretch the defense and really shoot it. So, we have to make sure in this game (Ole Miss) that we have him in the right match-up situation because they have so much quickness.

I don't know if you do pressure, if it's going to necessarily make them shoot any quicker. I think what becomes important in playing them is your late shot-clock defense.

He's probably never going to get to a point where he feels great the rest of the season. But I think his confidence level is high. It's good to see him take the amount of shots he took. He put up 11 3s on the road. It was great to see him confidently shoot the basketball and it was great to see him move to the next shot, even when he missed a couple in a row.

It was great to see him shoot the basketball and let it go with the confidence he did. The biggest thing I look at with Lee is the confidence level he's shooting the ball with. Tonight, he was just letting it go and shooting it with a great deal of confidence.

You can't get many assists if you don't shoot the ball well. I thought our player movement in the first half at times was poor.

I told them this would be a 40-minute battle from start to finish, and if you let frustration creep in at all, you guys are going to lose the game. This is going to be an ugly game where we may not shoot well, but we have to defend and rebound.

That's one of the things we talked about with our guys. How are we going to respond when we don't shoot well? Here was a night where we didn't shoot the ball well. This was a game where we had to grind it out and find a way to win.