courtesy of Jack Alden

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"There are more pluses, to say the least. We wanted to maintain our focus regardless of the score, and try to maintain the intensity in the second half, and for the most part I think we did that. We are more gifted, and I'm not trying to cut down Pittsburg State whatsoever. I think Gene's club played really hard and they were still fighting right to the very end, and they're sound defensively. But there's something that you can't coach. You cannot coach height. We were able to get the ball inside and did some good things early, yet we shot a good percentage from the three-point line, as well. "We've got to do a better job of playing defense with our feet inside. (Referring to foul trouble that limited Nick Collison and Jeff Carey to 18 minutes each.) A couple of Nick's were really silly, and one of Jeff Carey's really wasn't his. That foul was really on Drew. But we have to do a better job of playing defense without fouling; putting them on the free throw line. And especially without Wayne, we don't have that depth up front to begin with. But Chris Zerbe came in and gave us a couple of minutes and held us in there in the first half while we gave a couple of guys some rest after Nick got his third. We hope to get Wayne back soon so we can get a better rotation up there. "We're doing more things defensively as far as pressing and scrambling, and we have better team speed. Last year we did a great job of holding people's field goal percentage down, but we weren't as aggressive in trying to come up with some steals. That's what we're trying to do. And again, we had more players, bigger players, quicker players, and you should have more steals like that (21). "We need Bryant (Nash), and we need Bryant to develop. I always get tickled when people talk about so-and-so doesn't have any experience. You've got to give them an opportunity sometime, even though you're gonna have some growing pains. But he is gonna be important to us, we're gonna try to get him some minutes, and hopefully he'll keep improving. He does have some gifts. When he went up and blocked that shot in the second half, he may have been the only guy on our team who could have blocked that shot. "I didn't like our turnovers. We had 20, and I think some of them were careless; not taking care of the basketball. We've got to cut those down, because Saturday we won't be able to afford that and still win the game. "This next week will be a tough week. I hope our team will be willing to step up there, because there will be 15-16,000 people in the stands Saturday, and they're not going to be cheering for us. (Arizona) is a very good team that's already beaten three other ranked teams. At this point in the season, I think Arizona has probably accomplished more than anybody in college basketball."

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