Scott Skiles Tonight Quotations

Kirk was outstanding tonight pretty much from beginning to end. Defensively he was as good as he always is and he played with a nice tempo. He didn't really force anything, ran the offense well, penetrated and made a lot of good decision.

Our defense was good again tonight and we needed it. We sort of went cold in the second half. We went 12-for-42 in the second half. To win a game when you only make 12 field goals in the second half, obviously our defense was good.

I thought what we did particularly well tonight was that when calls did not go our way we did not go into one of our tremendously long droughts. We did not hang our heads and look defeated. We did the reverse and picked it up.

We pretty much got dominated all over the place. It was a full-on rout. We've been an unpredictable group, there's no question about that. We've had an up-and-down year in regard to our focus. Some nights we look great and some nights we don't. Tonight was unfortunately a don't.

Tonight was similar to other games we have played lately. We had our chances and weren't able to make plays when we had those chances.

We didn't look right. Right from the jump ball we weren't aggressive defensively. Tonight we were a step slow and they made us pay for it.

We did a lot of good things tonight with the exception of four or five minutes with our defense breaking down. Other than that we had 40 plus minutes of pretty solid defense. We moved the ball well. We got a lot of open looks.

We did not play well enough to win. We had way too many breakdowns, mentally and physically. We had a lot of trouble tonight from beginning to end maintaining our focus, and we paid for it.

Nothing. I told 'O' the other day we certainly have not lost confidence in him. I wanted to make sure he hasn't lost confidence in himself, and he assured me he hadn't. Tonight he got some good looks, and he was able to knock them down.

He set screens and got in front of the rim. He played with more energy on offense. And tonight was very aggressive, unlike earlier in the year.

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.

We just have to watch him -- that's why he's taking days off of practice -- and make sure he's not overdoing it. But if he's able to play, we'll play him and worry about each game one by one. If he has to overplay tonight to win the game, that's what we'll have to do.