Jim Calhoun Defense Quotations

If we're not playing defense and I call time out, I can tell you right now it's going to be X-rated. I'll go after some people or make some changes. It's not like this is the middle of the season and we can get it done next time. We're all here and it's a perilous journey. It's a wonderful journey, but the band plays on if you lose.

I would say our defense got us going, but it certainly wasn't the key to the game because I thought we let up many, many times. They all elevate. It hides sometimes bad defense. That was my concern tonight, the fact they were penetrating, particularly in the second half.

Our defense was inconsistent. The defense got us going but that wasn't the key because we let up so many times. I think it was a good win but we didn't play as well as we're capable of.

Overall, we just kind of overwhelmed them. When we play offensively like that we're very good. And this was their third game in five days so it made it very difficult for them to stay with us. Our depth is going to wear you out anyway. We didn't play great defense but we ran the court well.

We haven't played defense really well the past couple of weeks and that was just highlighted there.

When we're executing and blocking shots and playing defense and you don't get us in a situation where we have to create plays, we're absolutely terrific. But we're a flawed team.

We lead the country in field-goal percentage defense at 37 (percent) coming in. We average 9.6 blocked shots per game. All those numbers would tell you that we did not do the things that we're capable of doing.

What Louisville needed late in the game was experience. That's what we had, some guys coming down the stretch who know what to do. We turned our defense up in the last 4 1/2 minutes of the game, we took care of the ball, took good shots and made good decisions. This was a grind-it-out game.

We have Marcus Williams who made big plays down the stretch. We turned up the defense the last four or five minutes.

Both offensively and defensively, Craig is a big reason we're 11-0. So Craig will start Tuesday (in the Big East opener) at Marquette. He deserves that right. His defense up top on the ball sets up the rest of our defense. He's been a godsend.