Scott Skiles Last Quotations

We need to play 40-plus minutes of really good basketball. The last couple games, we've got 30-plus, but that's not good enough at this level to win the game.

This was a game that had a little bit of everything. I thought we showed a lot of fight and we made plays when we had to. They also made plays. Fortunately we had the ball for the last shot.

His personality has definitely come out this year, there's no doubt about it. He's much more comfortable around the guys. With the coaches, we could always have a basketball conversation with him last year because he understood the basketball terminology. But just as far as other conversations, it wasn't terribly difficult but it's much more easy now.

Tyson didn't do much this summer, from what I've seen, compared to last summer when he was here almost 75 days. It's the old thing where your agent tells you don't do anything until you get a contract, and a lot of guys think that literally means don't do anything. It really means don't play basketball.

We're in an enviable position. We have good young players, (high) draft picks and money to spend. Yet we're in last place in our division, so it's logical that people would call John and gauge if we're jittery and feel a need to make a big move. We happen to value our young players, and we're not gonna do anything silly.

Eddie played real well last night. Considering he's still kind of feeling his way out there. As you see him get more and more comfortable, he'll be more aggressive. Learning what is and what isn't a foul. Once he gets used to it, he'll get better and better.

We've had our ups and downs obviously this season. But the way they closed the season speaks to what kind of group of guys this is. We had many opportunities to not be as sharp, let the last few games go by and go on vacation (today). Whenever that (possibility) presented itself, the guys fought their way out of it.

After it got to seven points our guys just hung in there. Our guys were fatigued after last night's game, so I'm really proud of how they all battled.

Our defense kept us in the game. It was reminiscent of the way we won so many games last year. There are always points in the game when you struggle a little offensively. You hope it doesn't come at the end of the game. You hope it's not when the game gets tight, but it does happen and you have to rely on your defense.

We didn't handle it very well the last time we played them. We had a hard time reacting to it.

This is a different team than last season. It's obvious that it is. I mean, we haven't had the same amount of fight that we had before. Unfortunately, too many times, when things have gotten a little bit tough, we've rolled over. It happened again tonight.

I'm happy for our guys. I always wonder if they are going to get dejected because we've had close losses. We're starting to come around. We've played better in the last month or so and we've won our share of close games. We just need to keep it going.

I'm happy for Tyson. I'm sure a good amount of grief he's gone through has been self-imposed. He's kind of tortured himself for some of the games he hasn't played well in. He's really broke out the last three games and he was obviously excellent again tonight.

The last thing we wanted was to sit out there until 3 in the morning and then fly in.

In the last two years, we've played a lot of guys. A lot of teams are shortening up their rotation right now and going eight or nine. We don't have that kind of team yet.

It's no secret that the last couple of years we were trying to rebuild and redo our team, and there's a lot of teams that try to do that and can't get in the playoffs. For our guys to get in is a tribute to the way they have been resilient and stayed with it.

It's no secret the last two years we've been trying to rebuild. For our guys to get in this is a tribute to the way that they have been resilient and stayed with it. We want to move up. There's an opportunity to move up.

There was a lot of out-of-position fouling. If we don't let them go to the line that much, we probably get the win. We had a lot of trouble (defensively). The last three games, we haven't, but tonight we did it again. We didn't move our feet and play proper position defense.

They had an overtime game last night and we sitting here waiting for them. We played pretty well, but we didn't get Philly's best shot. We will see that next week when we play them again.

They're a different team than when we saw them last time.

I don't think we had any business being in OT, anyway. You don't have to score if you get two or three stops. As has been the case, we had trouble. Five point lead, buck-forty to go; that's a game we won last year.

The last two games have been very similar to a lot of wins we had last year where we're not playing our best but we keep battling, stay in the game and make the big plays in the end.