courtesy of Jack Alden

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"(Games like this) are fun to coach. It's a great tribute to those kids. And you have to feel a little sad for Arizona, because they've had such a great run, and they were as much as we could handle today. I kept trying to tell our kids, even when they were making their run, that we had to stay aggressive ourselves and we had to continue to attack. Jeff Boschee, Kirk Hinrich, even Brett Ballard banked one in from the top of the key that wasn't the best one, but I think we did keep coming back at 'em, and we made some free throws down the stretch, too. It's hard to play, as thin as we are up front, with Nick and Drew in foul trouble. But it was a great college basketball game in a great college atmosphere, and we are ecstatic. "Kirk's drive for two was big. So was the one from the side where they had to question whether it was a two or a three. I thought that was big. I thought Jeff Boschee's three from over there was big. You can just go down the line. Drew with 15 rebounds with Nick Collison in foul trouble. And you gotta talk about Jeff Carey playing and doing big things for us, plus Keith Langford came in and gave us a big lift."

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