courtesy of Jack Alden

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"In the first half, we were really good. It's the most excited I've been the entire season about our defense; the first time I've even been half way pleased about what we've done defensively. The second half it just got to be the kind of game where you can't maintain that kind of quality play against somebody who's a good basketball team. You've got to congratulate Boise State because they never stopped battling a single time. And for most of the second half, from that first spurt (by KU) early until about the last six minutes, they outscored us. I loved our work on the backboards, I loved our ability to get good shots and make good shots, and I loved our defensive play, particularly in the first half. "The only thing that was discouraging, and it was really discouraging to me, was the way we mishandled the ball in the second half. We handled it like we'd never played. We had 24 turnovers, and that's just silly. We were careless in the first half. I think we had 10 or 12 turnovers at halftime. The second half, it was just ridiculous. We turned the ball over on a break situation. We had an advantage, and we can't even make a simple bounce pass to turn a three-on-two into a field goal for us. We'll talk to some of those guys, and a couple of 'em are gonna come in and watch tape with me. "The first half, I thought we were really good. Mario turned it over, sort of a silly one one time, Drew made a bad pass to turn it over, Kenny threw it away trying to throw it in to Eric, and there was another silly one. There were four where we said if you take those away, we had 19% loss of ball in the first half. Most of the time, we can make a living on that if we're accomplishing things, and we really were. We scored 57 points in the first half. I think in the second half we were probably 25-30% loss of ball, and still shoot 63%. It doesn't take a physicist to figure out you ought to shoot the dadgum ball instead of turning the sucker over. "Eric didn't play his best game by any means. He missed a lot of easy shots. But I do like to look down there and see 13 rebounds. He had an opportunity to score about a hundred, and didn't quite get there. But I like how active Eric is, and he is trying. He just missed some easy shots tonight. Thirteen rebounds, 15 points, and three blocks. Most nights you'll take that, and especially when he had the best assists to errors ratio of anybody on our team. If he wins that award, that'll be the first one, probably, in his career. He has three assists and only one turnover, and we didn't have any guards doing it that well. "(Kirk Hinrich, 10 assists, 6 TO) doesn't feel really good about his play, and I don't, either. We're gonna come in and watch some tape together. But he's a heck of a basketball player who really has done some great things for us this year. He set the tone for the defense tonight by establishing out front that he wasn't gonna get beat on the drive. I would not be disappointed in his play at all except for the six turnovers."

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