Jay Wright Guys Quotations

One of the areas the NBA has affected college basketball is the big guys. If they're very skilled as young guys, they take them early. The guys who are able to benefit from maturing four years in college are the guards.

Obviously this was an incredible Big East battle. We just said to ourselves, this is BIG EAST game No. 1 - it tells you what this league will be like...Timely shots by Allan Ray, Jason Frazier and Dante Cunningham kept us in the game. Every time Louisville made runs at us, those guys made big plays. Game number one in the Big East, that's what it's going to be like.

I don't ever think I used the word grind about a season and I found myself using it at the end of this one. There was never a time to relax and that's a positive for a great league. We never had to get our guys ready. I'd rather have it that way when every game was a big game.

I don't think we understand how hard people are going to come at us. These guys have never gone through a season like this, ranked early, getting so much attention. Everyone else wants to make their name off you. You can't imagine how hard people come at you.

I think what we all see in (Florida) this year is an outstanding team. They really play off each other -- five guys double-figure (scoring), and for us it's a different kind of challenge. We realize we are getting everybody's best game.

Our guys still have some things to prove. But I'd be proud to have my team compared to that team.

I think these guys have been through so much - normally, losing a player of Curtis' status would be devastating.

Our coaches and our guys have a feel for that team. We know them and that should help us prepare for them. But, on the other hand, they know us too.

I was very pleased with our defensive effort, no matter what the score was we kept a very intense effort each possession and I was proud of our guys for that.

I thought we started the game really strong and were very focused, which is a credit to our guys playing at 10:30 in the morning. I thought Australia made a great adjustment in the second half by going to a smaller lineup which gave us trouble.

We don't have one or two big guys that we count on to get rebounds and that we keep around the basket. All of our guys guard all over the floor defensively, so anybody could be in any position. We do need to use five guys rebounding.

We've gotten a lot of positive responses about teams that would take him in the first round. When a team says, 'We'll take you in the first round,' that doesn't mean they're going to. That means they would. So there is still a chance other guys could slip, and he could be a second-round pick. He understands that.

What we do he used to call chuck and duck. I love all the intricate sets he used to run, but with the personnel we have, we've got to let these guys go. We really stress playing together and we have the kind of guys who enjoy that.

We ran into a team that played better basketball today. We're going to suck up this hurt tonight but I want to make sure my guys feel great about themselves. They gave everything they had.

We had no choice. We had a lead. We are in the NCAA tournament. We said, 'Let's get through this second half and let's see if these guys can hold onto the ball, and we make some plays and just try to rebound with them.

When both guys went with Al ... Kyle Lowry actually did a great job of offing to Allan and got it to (Sheridan). It was a great play by all three.

At this point last year, we were in catastrophe mode. We were actually putting in new stuff, playing guys at different positions. ... I think we all were quietly apprehensive at this point last year, we didn't know what we were going to do.

What we are most proud of is these young guys really wanted to be part of the U.S. basketball team. They didn't care who was the leading scorer. That's unique these days.

You have to be careful about that because you don't want to give the guys too much information and lose our aggressiveness.

One guy, Speedy Claxton. He reminds me a lot of him. You ask how does a guy 5-10 make it to the NBA? That's the kind of things Speedy did. He's the only other person I've seen do that. That's why he's special. A lot of guys say, 'I'm a point guard. I set people up, that's what I do.' Kyle's a ballplayer. He says: 'I'll do anything I have to do'... The point guard is not supposed to do that. A good team can block out four guys. You're not thinking about blocking out the point guard, but he loves that. That's a basketball player.

A lot of times bigger players have to bang inside, they have to do the dirty work, they have to screen, they have to defend in the post, they have to post up. If a smaller guys doesn't mind doing that and actually enjoys doing that, he can play that position and that's what we have.

They take the coaching out of your hands. It's unbelievable to have two guys out there who make the right decision every single time.

This is as good a college basketball atmosphere as you are going to find in the country. It starts with the students and this is a very difficult place to play. Our guys love to play here and we feel like we have an advantage in here. It's hot, there are people on top of you and they're loud. It's just a great place to play college basketball. I've always thought its one of the best. I don't know if there's anywhere in the country with a wall of human beings like that behind one basket that can create that noise. We love it.

(Smith and Dudley) are the kind of guys that when you play against them, it's tough to like them. But when you get to know them, they're great kids. You hate to play against them, though, because they kill you. They beat you up.

It?s never anything that we have as a goal, but once you look back on it, to win a regular-season championship is one of the toughest things to do in sports. Coaches and players know that. Fans usually get into tournaments and things like that. And that?s OK. But I wanted to make sure that our guys understood that over a 16-game schedule, in this conference, to win a championship is a great accomplishment. If we would have lost today and been 13-3 in this conference, that?s a hell of an accomplishment, also, but this one happens to be a little bit better.

I just wanted our guys to settle down. We have experienced guys; they know how to handle it.

I know our guys believed we could beat them and even if we lost this game they would believe it. Everyone talks about our guards, but in our locker room we know what our forwards can do.

These guys - Allan, Randy, Kyle, Mike even - they're tough kids. They enjoy rebounding. They enjoy being basketball players, not just guards that stand out on the perimeter.

That's the beauty of this team. We have a lot of guys who have the ability to score, but give it up because of the other guys. And then when they're needed, they'll do it. Like tonight, we needed Mike and Kyle to score and they did. Randy gets 10 rebounds tonight and he's in foul trouble and he doesn't care because we won. It's a fun team to coach.

That's a Big Five game, and as long as we play in the Big Five, I'm never going to have one of these games let me make decisions about my team. These games are crazy. I'm not going to be down on my guys based on what happens in these games. We just have to survive these games.

There was never a time to relax. That's probably a positive, a sign of a great league. We never had to worry about our guys being ready for a game. You cannot relax one second.

If he and Mike came, we wouldn't be able to get Kyle (Lowry). If we didn't get Mike and got (Shakur), we probably could get Kyle. Players like playing with good players. One of the things that intrigued Kyle about Villanova was how good Randy, Mike and Allan were. When he came and played with them I think he was impressed. Sometimes some of these guys like being around other real good players and I think that's what happened in Kyle's case.