courtesy of Jack Alden

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"It was exciting. We won, so that made it a great trip. We've got a pretty good string going here in New York with these pre-season tournaments. "They got the game down to two points, I think. As you know, I'm not one to watch the score and the clock a lot. But I called a timeout at that point and chewed on 'em a little bit, because I thought we were giving in and weren't playing very smart. We were on our heels instead of being aggressive. After that and after the TV timeout at 4:00, I thought we went out and really played well. We got some big-time rebounds on the defensive end. Yes, we'd like for Drew to make those free throws, but St. John's missed some free throws, too. Those things usually even out. "I thought Drew was sensational. I didn't start him tonight because his defensive grade was not as good as Eric and Nick Collison. I told him today, 'You've still got to be big for us, because you're gonna play. But you've got to have a better defensive grade than that.' And he did. He came out and played very well. Kenny was really big for us with offensive rebounds, and came up with some defensive boards, too. Mario gave us a nice lift when Kirk and Jeff were both in foul trouble. And Nick Collison was the one who scored when they cut it to two, then missed, and we got it back and Nick scored to give us a four-point cushion. "(Zone defense) wasn't bad tonight. It was much better than last night. We'd made the decision we were going to zone some anyway, because I don't think they're (St John's) as effective against zone as they are man-to- man. We made a bunch of errors, but still you've got to learn, and the only way you can learn is to do it in a game, and we'll show it to them on tape. We've got a full week before we play again, so we'll watch a lot of tape this week. "I took Drew out late in the game because he really ticked me off because he made some wild play instead of playing fundamentally. He can be a fantastic player when he plays the way he's supposed to. "We'll enjoy it for a little while, but we've got a lot of work to do, too, and hopefully we'll get a lot better this week in practice."

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