Coach Williams' Post-Game Comments
after Florida 83, Kansas 73

courtesy of Jack Alden

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“You have the same feelings (tonight vs Wednesday night) when you’re not successful, but I really do believe we competed tonight, particularly those last 14 or 15 minutes of the game. We came and made two baskets early and cut it to six. Then they make three in a row, and the guys could have folded their tents then. We sort of meandered around there for the next couple of minutes, but at about the 14:00 or 15:00 mark, from that point on, we really competed. They were up 19, and we got it to a two-point ball game. We had the ball a couple of times when it was a four-point game.

“You have to congratulate Florida. We made a couple of runs, and Walsh or Brett Nelson or somebody would step up and make a big three. Walsh is having a fantastic freshman year, and getting Brett back really helps him. I thought Matt Bonner was really tough for us to handle, as well.

“They’re very good shooters. We had trouble guarding the dribble, they’d penetrate and pitch to an open guy. In the first half, we had trouble guarding the screen at the top of the key, and Justin Hamilton was able to get inside a little more and pitch it out. We started doubling in the second half and did a little better job. One key point, it was a five-point game, we needed a stop, and Matt Walsh hits a three. We come down and have a turnover, and they go back and hit another three, and that really made it difficult. Congratulate them. They made plays, but so much more the last 14 minutes of the game tonight I thought we competed, and the other night I didn’t think we did that.

“(Kirk Hinrich) loves to play, and he’s a tough, tough kid. Looking back on it now, I probably shouldn’t have played him. But I went to talk to him during the warmup, and he said, ’Coach, I really can play and I want to play. I think I can help us.’ It’s tough for him, because his back limits everything. Last night he even had trouble bending over and putting his shoes on. He took some medication, stretched a lot, got a lot of treatment. You look at the stats, and you think he wasn’t important to the game tonight, but he was important because the kids get so much strength from him. He wanted to play, and he’s a senior, so I let him play.

“We’ve got to build from today. We’ve got to build at our first practice, our second practice, our third practice, and everybody’s got to do their part and all the little things. We had a lot of aggravating things after we got up here, and I think that affected how we played, and you can’t have those.

“I told the kids, it’s a long season, we’ve got a big-time tough schedule we’ve got to play, and hopefully they got some strength from how they competed there. Make some free throws in the first half and make some three-footers… We had probably five or six shots three feet from the basket in the first half and didn’t make any. And then we were 10-20 from the free throw line in the first half. You do those kinds of things, and that gives the other team too much when they’re as good as Florida.”

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