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"It was a very physical game. Both teams playing exceptionally hard. The first half, they were more aggressive, more attentive. They beat us to all the loose balls. Then we turned around in the second half and we got a lot of the loose balls and did a much better job on the backboards. We had to play a lot more zone than we wanted to because we were fouling so many times. We've got to do a better job of that. That's something that has hurt us all year long, and at some point in time we've got to do a better job of that. "I'm really proud of our kids. We talked to them at halftime about how we haven't had a comeback, haven't been down at halftime this year and come back to win (KU trailed by 8 at half), so we wanted to see how tough we were mentally. I was really pleased. "They made two big threes there at the end that we don't want to give to anybody. But Jeff Boschee knocked in a couple of big threes for us, Drew Gooden got some rebounds that were important to us. At the end of the game, I thought Nick Bradford was getting every rebound on the defensive boards. We got good play from Kirk Hinrich when Jeff was in foul trouble. We had some pretty doggone good play out of a lot of people in the second half. "We really tried to concentrate (defensively) on Jacquay (Walls) because he hurt us so badly last year. We didn't want to put him on the free throw line as many times as we did. I felt like their whole team made a living on the free throw line. But Nick, Kenny, Marlon, Jeff -- all the perimeter players - - know how good he is. Twenty-two and 23 points in the two games last year, so we already knew he could play. "We'll enjoy the heck out of this one tonight, that's for sure. It's Number 1700, and I congratulated the kids in the locker room."