Roy Williams Last Quotations

Maybe 12 noon Sunday morning is too early. They may not like playing at that time. I told 'em, whatever they did last night, change it before we play again.

Last night was about as impressive an opening-round game as I've ever seen a team play. They were so impressive last night, I was dumbfounded.

Last night was about as impressive an opening-round game that I have ever seen a team play. I mean, I felt like they were shooting about 85 percent. They were guarding. They were doing everything.

I've seen a lot of teams, including Kansas last year, go far after they struggled in their first games. You have to get by and get lucky sometimes. We have to play better Saturday. We have no hope, no chance if we don't play better Saturday.

They shot something like 60 percent from outside their last three games. That was bound to even out sooner or later.

You never know when your freshmen come in how hard they're going work, how they're going to adjust to bigger, quicker players. His work ethic was something I thought was really good and it's far surpassed even what I thought. He's a phenomenally gifted kid who wants to get better, who treats every play like the last and you don't find many freshmen who do it like that.

Then the other thing is that Wes has been playing so hard. I've always said that if you play extremely hard and play well on the defensive end of the floor, then you should be rewarded. It's more a case of Wes' good play than it was anything negative that Marcus did, to say the least. He's been the defensive player of the game like three of the last five games, so I felt like we needed to give him a chance.

It seemed like they scored on the last 10 possessions. Part of it is you always have to give credit to the other team. I like their club. I watched them a couple times last year. You have to give them credit. We didn't play as intelligently as we'd have liked to.

I really do believe Monday night's game will be great for college basketball. Larry Brown 's Pistons last year made a statement in the NBA about playing the game a certain way -- sharing the ball, being a team. .... I'm hoping the way we play, the way Illinois plays, that people will decide that truly is what's most important, not just one guy shooting or one guy high-flying around.