On Yves Pons impact on defense
“He is as big a part of winning every game we win is anybody that we have. He’s always making winning plays that don’t show up in the stat sheet. He blocks shots, we know how good he is there. We love him. Everybody knows how hard he works. Once he makes a couple three’s, he’s only going to get off going because he works too hard. Just like Santi went through a stretch for a couple games. We know he can shoot; we know Yves can shoot. Yve can do so many other things. He is just a great weapon defensively because as we’ve said many times, we can put him anywhere on the floor to guard anybody and then when he’s away from the ball he does a tremendous job of coming over and making plays.”
On Tennessee’s defensive game plan against Emanuel Miller
“Obviously, it is important. I can rave about our assistants. They do an unbelievable job of scouting teams and trying to give our players the best cheat sheet that they can give them. I thought our guys did a really good job of helping each other, trying to do the things that we ask them to do through our scout. It’s always a team effort, it’s never going to be one guy, even though we know Yve anchors at defense. It is a multiple effort by a lot of different guys having to play against players like that.”