On what ‘drawing the line’ means to the team and how is that something they accomplished:
“It was about us. The line had nothing to do with anybody but us. The night before we talked about the things that we had to do within our own team. This group of guys, they love each other, they care about each other, but it’s about the respect level within our team in terms of guys doing their jobs night in and night out, and excepting the role that we need them to play. A lot of it was directed towards rebounding the basketball. We had gotten our tails kicked in rebounding. Whether you want to call it toughness or technique, the fact is it’s a mindset. We said we’re going to draw the line. We’ve talked, and everybody says you just have to do it. Whether you’re talking about–whatever it takes is what it gets down to. Block your man out and go get the ball. We’ve got to go rebound. Drawing the line, what we’re referring to is in our own team structure in terms of proving to ourselves that we were tough enough to do it and capable of doing it.”
On his early impressions of Ole Miss:
“Well, obviously they have a whole new team from a year ago. With Kermit and his teams—you go back to the beginning of the year they, have been playing great basketball. They are aggressive, they trap, they really work hard at turning you over and they do a terrific job of getting turnovers, and turning those turnovers into baskets. They are very active defensively and I really like the way they run their offense with speed. So, every night we go out, it’s a different opponent, but yet we have to have to same mindset in terms of playing against teams that are very well coached and they know what they’re looking for. He’s going to have them ready to play, and he always has his teams ready to play. We’ve got to be ready to step up and show that we can be consistent.”
NEXT: Rick Barnes media availability continued