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"They really get emotionally high to play us. They get tired of us getting most of the attention. I tried to warn our team that would be the kind of club that they would have, but they're a better basketball team than they were last year, as well. Four of them started against us last year. They're a veteran club for the most part, play really well, and Manny Dies was sensational on the offensive end. We really had trouble with him. The whole team really beat us to death on the backboards. In the first half they had seven or nine more than we did. So at halftime we talked about playing our defensive principles and getting better on the defensive end. We didn't focus a heck of a lot on the offensive end, because we just couldn't shoot the ball in the basket. We hoped to take away a little bit of that pressure, and they'd feel better about the offense. It didn't get any better, but our defense got a lot better. In the last 10 or 12 minutes of the game, that may have been as good as we've played defensively. And we were much better on the backboards and got some second shots in the second half. "Lester was really good in the first half. They'd try to bounce it into the post, and he was running around the guy and stealing the basketball. But that was really the only thing we were getting accomplished defensively on the post players, because Manny was having a field day on us. They did a great job of execution. They were running the UCLA cut and having Manny on the step-in, and that was hurting us. They were running double-down for those guys coming around, and Shawn (Rhodes) made a three in transition. They were doing the things we warned our club about, but they were still doing them. "Paul struggled offensively as badly as I've ever seen him struggle. But he made a basket in the run that got it to more than a one possession game for us. And then the biggest offensive play of the game was Ryan's three from the corner. "(55 wins in a row at home) meant something to me. There's not a lot of those records that mean a lot to me, but this means you have good players. This one today I wanted because I wanted it for kids that I've coached. I tried not to say too much about it to the team. We talked about it the first night because of the distractions, but I think the kids themselves wanted to be a part of that and felt a little bit of that pressure. "I'm really happy for Billy. He had stated publicly that one of his goals was to see if he could get into that 1,000-point club, and I think he was rushing it a little bit early."