Chris Kielsmeier Quotations

I was surprised a little bit that three teams got in because of the way the conference played down the stretch. That just shows the national respect people have for our conference.

I feel real confident about our ability to continue to win. It's a fun time of year. You're excited to be playing and I've talked to the players about enjoying the moment and not putting too much pressure on themselves. They need to just relax and have fun. This is the highlight of the season for the program and they have a chance to do something special.

I think we've got a great shot to get an at-large bid if we win one more, but I really think we need to get by Ozarks on Friday. But the only way you're going to feel comfortable about making the NCAA tournament is by getting that automatic bid.

We didn't control the game. The last couple of weeks we talked about that a lot. You have to control the game in the postseason and play smart. It's frustrating because we just didn't play very well tonight.

We're extremely excited to still be playing, but we're not going to focus on what happened last year. It's something you can't help but think about, but it's not something you focus on as a coach. These are two completely different teams.

I've really felt all year that this was the best shooting team I've ever had, but for whatever reason at times we've underachieved on the offensive end and haven't played up to our potential. That wasn't the case Saturday against Schreiner and that's a very good sign. But it needs to keep going.

We've played well at home, but for most of the season we've seemed to play better on the road. Our focus seems to get a lot better on the road. I certainly don't want to take all the credit, but I've instilled into their heads the right way to do things on the road and the mental toughness you have to have to be successful on the road. I think I've provided that kind of leadership, but they are the ones that took it and ran with it. They are the ones that have followed through and gotten it done.

We've had a young team all year, but we always played hard. In the last month or so, though, we're playing at another level above just playing hard. I think that's what separated this program from others the last couple of years, and now we've just put it all together.

This team had to go through so much the last two weeks with the injuries, and then they won their first-ever NCAA tournament game Friday. I love coaching this team so much, it just wasn't our night. But we took another step this year.