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"The last six and a half or seven minutes I thought we played well. We were more active, more alert. It seemed like we were more emotionally into it at that point than we were the first 32 or 33 minutes of the game. I don't understand and don't know why. But Jeff Boschee stepped up and made a big three for us, and then we went zone, trying to bother them, and I think it did bother them for a while. Then we got a couple of other buckets at the other end. Jeff made another three as the shot clock was winding down. Jeff goes to the free throw line, misses the free throw, and Nick Bradford gets the rebound and puts that in. "And the freshmen were big for us tonight. Nick Collison and Drew Gooden. I couldn't get Drew to use his brain quite as much as I wanted him to out there. And Junior (Collison) was the only inside threat we had there for a long time. I thought Kenny Gregory defensively on Justin Love was important to us, yet Love still gets 19, eight for 20. It's tough to completely stop a guy like that. We just wanted to cut down on his percentage. It's a strange tale to start talking about Kenny Gregory at the defensive end of the floor, because the first two years we didn't talk in those terms. "At the half we had one more field goal, the same number of three- pointers, the same number of free throws, they had two more rebounds. I do think we rebounded better in the second half. I think we ended up out-rebounding them by eight, but we out-rebounded them by ten in the second half, and that was important to us. I didn't like a couple of crazy turnovers we had down there after we got the eight point lead, but still we were able to do it defensively the last four minutes of the game. "I don't think (coming back from the Christmas break) had anything to do (with KU's sluggish start). St. Louis had to do the same thing. We came back Monday and had a practice Monday night, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and had some good practices. I have no answer for it, but I really didn't think we were emotionally into it as much as we needed to be. I didn't think Eric was emotionally into it at all. Thirteen minutes in the first half, and he only has one rebound. He struggled tonight, and I think the two who struggled more than anybody was Eric Chenowith and Luke Axtell. Luke wants to make the basket, but he wants to make it before he catches the ball, and he's rushing himself. But the other guys picked it up. Marlon London gave us some good moments off the bench, too. "Last year when we played at St. Louis, their crowd was unbelievable from the first moment to the last, and I wish that our crowd had been that way, but that usually goes along with how you're playing, and St. Louis played very well last year from the first moment to the last. What comes first? The chicken or the egg? I guess they want us to try to spur them, but we need them to get into it, too. "We're gonna practice tomorrow night. We're having a clinic for children around the area at noontime tomorrow. After that we'll give them a chance to get a bite, and then come back and practice a little bit. The new millennium doesn't mean anything to me. It's basketball season."