courtesy of Jack Alden

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"I'm satisfied in that I know we were trying hard, but we weren't very crisp, we didn't execute. We ran probably 12 set plays, and we were 0-12 as far as running them the way we're supposed to, except for one play in the whole first half, and that's when Kirk came down and shot it quickly to see if we could get a two-for-one. Other than that, we didn't do a very good job executing what we wanted to do. We had two or three spurts where we were really frantic and went at it with a sense of urgency on defense, and we made some good things happen. But it's gotta be five guys doing that, not just one or two. I told them in the locker room, I'm not ticked off at the whole world or anything like that, but we've got to get a lot better, and they've got to see that as well as I do. "That team did some things that will bother us. They shot so many threes, their three and four men could get out on the court and shoot the ball and take Nick and Drew and Wayne and those guys away from the basket. "The second half we didn't foul 'em as much as the first half; we were reaching in and fouling, so I liked that part better. But the biggest disappointment would be the backboards, because I think if that kind of team is shooting so many threes, we should have more rebounds by a much wider margin than we did. I think if we can do that and get better movement on our offensive end, that'll help. We've gotta run the floor, too. There can't be any casual approach. I think that effort in running the floor is something we need to work on more than anything. "A majority of the time we did have three little guys (guards) in there. All three can handle the ball. Aaron (Miles) has tremendous speed and quickness. We've got to get him to push it more and not come up with a casual approach. If we can do that, we can do some good things. But as I've said since Media Day, I'm concerned about the backboards. We've got to do a better job at that. If we can't do that, then we've got to start playing three big guys, and I don't know how well we can guard people out on the court when we do that. "I'm not supposed to brag on freshmen, but (Wayne Simien) definitely been the most consistent freshman, and I'm not so sure he hasn't been as consistent as anybody on our team throughout 21 practices. It was not a surprise to me what he did tonight, but we've got to keep him healthy. He banged up his wrist, and we were worried about that; had it x-rayed on Monday. But he was pretty impressive out there tonight. "If you push it as hard as you can, you're gonna have some turnovers, and I want us to push it as hard as we can. I want us to go up and down the court and attack more aggressively on the offensive end. We're gonna have some turnovers, but I wasn't that displeased. I can live with 28-14 every night."

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