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Coach Williams' postgame comments
after Kansas 83, Missouri 82
courtesy of Jack Alden

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"I'd take that (one point victory) every single day and be happy. It was a great basketball game. If you just enjoy college basketball, you had to enjoy the atmosphere, the intensity both teams had. It was a very different game on both ends of the court. They were making threes. We were trying to get our baskets by focusing on the inside part. It was a fantastic day for the seniors. Nick Bradford competed so hard all day with the steals, the loose balls; kept us in it and kept after everybody. I didn't have to say a lot of things to get after people because he was doing it for us.

"I thought Nick's all over game was sensational. Drew Gooden was really something on the backboards and scoring for us. I thought Kirk Hinrich's leadership... Drew and Kirk making the free throws there at the end....

"They're a very difficult basketball team, a very difficult matchup for us with all the shooters, because we try to play people with size, and it's hard to go out a guard guys like that. If you try to switch down and start playing smaller guys, then you give up your advantage inside. And today we were able to make the inside more of a factor than we were in Columbia, that's for sure.

"They're good defensively. Everybody talks about their shooting, but their pressure is really good. We had to get a lot tougher ourselves in order to get the basketball toward the basket, because they were guarding and pressuring us 35 feet out.

"It was ridiculous. Drew Gooden lost his man twice, and Jeff Hafer hit two threes. And then we go to a zone, and Kenny doesn't go out and guard Jeff Hafer. I said, 'They're guarding about like I am,' and I was 45 feet away. I challenged them to not have anything left when they came off that court today, and that was not what we were doing. We gave them three straight threes.

"After they scored and there was one-tenth of a second left to play, there's a youngster from Columbus, Ohio who almost got choked in the middle of Allen Fieldhouse because we were supposed to foul. But Kenny for some reason ran beside Keyon Dooling for 30 feet and didn't foul him. That's all we talked about during the whole timeout was, we're going to pick them up down court, and as soon as they get to the ten-second line, we're going to foul them right there so they can't shoot a three. It's like Ricardo Patton said when Walls made that 35-footer, he said, 'Sometimes kids have to make plays.' They made a play because they made him (Dooling) miss the shot.

"I did not think (Hafer; two intentional fouls) was trying to hurt any of our players. He was very aggressive, and wanted to make sure they didn't make the shot. It's the smart thing to do to foul Kenny Gregory on a breakaway. He's one of the best dunkers and one of the worst free throw shooters, so it's a smart play. It was a little excessive. I thought both fouls were called properly. But I've got a great deal of respect for Jeff Hafer."

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