courtesy of Jack Alden

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"Their game plan was a great game plan. Their coach was by far the best coach on the floor tonight. Their kids were more prepared to play tonight. They played better. My hat's off to them. It was a sorry job on my part, there's no question about that. Somebody said it probably meant more to them, and it shouldn't do that. It should mean just as much to us. I think that's an excuse. There's no way that game should mean more to them, but that's what it was, and it's my job as the coach to make sure my team is more focused than they were tonight. There weren't a lot of things that we did that were very good. "In the first half, they had 12 more shots than we did, and you can't win basketball games giving the other team that many opportunities. We turned it over 11 times (in the first half). It was not a good basketball game. There's not one thing that we did very well tonight. Maybe we believed what everybody was saying about how good we were; the starting five and the subs. We didn't get anything off the bench. We got poor play off the bench, we got poor play from the starters. So many times tonight we had it at point blank range and couldn't finish because it's the first time we've been challenged all year. That's something we've been worried about, because I want us to be challenged more in practice. This was the first game that Wayne and Nick and those guys were challenged up around the basket. Our big guys shot a terrible percentage. It was just not a good game for us. "Kirk's back was bothering him, and Wayne turned his ankle again early in the game, but those are just excuses. We didn't play very well, we didn't make good decisions. But credit them. They were more focused than we were, they were quicker to the ball, they made us look silly, and that's about as embarrassed as I've ever been."

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