courtesy of Jack Alden

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"It was a tough night for us. We felt like a couple of times they took a shot we wanted them to take, but they kept makin' all of 'em. I think you just have to congratulate them. I thought they played really well. We played really well down the stretch. We never did feel like we had a handle on the game until the last four or five minutes. I thought they were sharper than we were, I thought they were more aggressive than we were. Then when you look at 11-17 from the three-point line... As I've told a lot of people, when you have a successful, experienced club like they have, they feel they can win anywhere. It started out early. Sullivan made one early from about six or seven feet behind the line, and Horton made one late in the game right in front of their bench that looked like it was ten feet behind the line. You like for them to take those shots sometimes, but with the good shooters you've still got to be able to get out and get a hand up, and we didn't do it. "At the same time, you've got to be proud of the way the kids battled back. We were down 10 or 11, but got it back there at the end and thought we had a chance, but just didn't make a shot. "We're 5-11 (3pt), and you can usually live by that, but they're 11- 17. But again, congratulate them because they made 'em. We've got to do a better job of getting out there and getting a hand up, regardless of how far out they are, and make them shoot it over our hands. If it's a bad shooter, you don't have to do that. But the guys who took those shots are the guys we talked about in the scouting report that would take the shots. "We ran a play first to try to get Nick Collison inside, and didn't get it. That's when we went to 'Go' (isolation for Kirk Hinrich to penetrate). Then we got the basketball back (after Hinrich missed a three), called time out and tried to set a play for Jeff Boschee to run across the screen by Nick Collison on the baseline. So we had Jeff coming to the corner, we had Nick stepping in on the block, and then we had Eric screening down for Luke on the other side. The first option is Jeff, the second option is Nick, the third option is Luke, and they did a good job covering it. It looked like they probably switched the screen on the other side and Martin Rancik looked like he got out on Luke and really made it difficult for him to take the shot. "The last year and a half, they're 25-4 in the league, all four of the losses have been on the road and in overtime. In that time, we've played 'em three really good games. I thought we had a chance to win all three, but we're 0-3 the last two years. We get a chance to play 'em again, and hopefully we'll play better and get a hand up on some of those shots, and they won't make 'em next time."

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