courtesy of Jack Alden

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“It was a disappointing finish, but Oregon’s got a fantastic team with one of the true class gentlemen in college basketball coaching ‘em in Ernie Kent. We knew it was going to be difficult, to say the least. It was a great college atmosphere. If you love basketball, you had to love everything that was going out there. “We had our chances. We didn’t do what we needed to do down the stretch those last two or three minutes, and we made some big-time mistakes. But Oregon had a lot to do with that. We had two turnovers, they made some shots, then Luke (Ridnour) stepped up and made a big three. We should have switched that; just had a breakdown defensively. And I’ll tell you another thing, too. The Anderson kid came in and made some big shots for them. When you’re trying to guard Luke Jackson and Luke Ridnour, and you concentrate there, and Anderson stepped up and made those shots, it was big for ‘em. “That’s (foul trouble) basketball. You gotta play with who you can have out there on the court. I was probably more disappointed with out handling of the basketball than anything else that we did today. They competed their tails off. We competed like a lot of the great Kansas teams that we’ve had. It was a tough atmosphere. We’re down 14, 15, 16 points or whatever it was at one point there, and for them to hang in there and make some plays was good for us. But we’re not into moral victories. Never have been, never will be. “Michael Lee did some good things for us. Of the guys off the bench the other night when Kirk didn’t play, I thought Michael played the best of those guys, and we tried to get him involved again today, not just because he was home but because I thought he would play a little better. He did some nice things for us just competing. “(Kirk Hinrich) is awfully competitive, and he feels really bad right now because he missed several free throws that he wanted to make. We missed some opportunities, and we’ve got to cash in on those opportunities if we want to be the kind of basketball team we say we do.”

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