I don't know that you get a whole lot out of losing and saying that you played well. But I thought we played really hard. We didn't quit, and we weren't intimidated.
Overall, I thought this was probably our best stretch of man-to-man defense that we've played all season. Now, we just have to keep working at that. We've been playing better. The last four games, I think we probably are playing our best basketball. It's coming together.
I thought we played really hard for a 10-minute spurt in the second half. We tried to create turnovers and speed the game up. But we were down by over 20 to a good team that plays ball control, and it was too much to overcome.
That was one of things we talked about. We wanted him to lead the nation in rebounds. He?s done a real good job with that and what?s he?s really done is played with a lot of intensity in our practices and games. He?s the hardest worker.
The guys have really responded. Defensively, they've taken it more personal, played a lot harder and a lot more together.