I have been a big admirer of Don Haskins for a long time. He is one of the top defensive minds in the game and he is good man, a real coach.

What Louisville needed late in the game was experience. That's what we had, some guys coming down the stretch who know what to do. We turned our defense up in the last 4 1/2 minutes of the game, we took care of the ball, took good shots and made good decisions. This was a grind-it-out game.

The two guards are just absolutely playing terrific.. Whitney has really become a force in this league. They're the kind of team that feels good about itself and those kind of teams you cannot give an opening to.

I'm not that impressed by my team very much, but we were very good tonight. I can't think of a game where we shared the ball so well and ran so well.

A lot of times games are built up and they don't fulfill their promise. This game more than fulfilled its promise. Villanova may be, pound-for-pound, the toughest team that we've played anywhere, any time. Early in the game, we had to match their toughness. They were getting every offensive rebound. They were hustling like crazy. Unless you have a tough team, you cannot win this conference. It was like an old Big East backyard ball amongst two really good teams.

They run very good offense. If you're not on top of your game, they've got guys on this year's team that can make plays. I think our kids are going to have to pick it up a level.

They've caught some magic in my opinion and they're feeling really good about themselves. When a team feels good about itself they're really tough to beat.

This is our team and it's a pretty good one. When Rudy didn't play well, Denham stepped up. There were other guys, too. We appear to be a pretty good team with a lot of answers.

Right now, we have to prepare ourselves for a team that feels very good about itself. We have to tighten our defense.

The thing that scares me always the most and the thing I caution our players on is that next week, you go home. You go home for the Big East tournament. And then next time you go home, we pack up the uniforms. And this team is good enough to get to Indianapolis. Will it get to Indianapolis? I have no idea. ... Maybe the first round of the tournament some team gets up, plays us tough and we don't execute.

Everyone's talking about how many we'll send, let's see if we can get out of the league first. People who are good are going to rack up a lot of losses. ... I'm afraid we will beat each other up so much that records won't be truly indicative of how good a team is.

Both of our NCAA Championships (1999, 2004) came in years where we won the Big East Tournament. Time will tell if that's an automatic correlation. There are no good losses. No moral victories. But I do know this team is one to be reckoned with at the NCAA tourney.

We have to keep reminding them they?re the No. 1 team in the country to get them to truly believe how good they are. I mean, I spent two hours against Albany trying to get my team to truly believe that. Let?s put it this way: For 28-3, we?re not an overly confident basketball team. On the contrary, this is a team that sometimes has had crises of confidence.

I think Indiana is a very good basketball team. I just think there were moments and minutes in that game where we were pretty special. It didn't matter who we were playing because we blocked everything, we ran out and we made good decisions. I'm very proud of my basketball team today.

I still felt right to the end we would win the game. This team is walking out 30-4. If we keep winning 30 games a year, I think we'll be in pretty good shape and we'll win our championships again. We didn't get there this year, but we'll do that.

We just have superior numbers of people. Not even superior people because Robert gets them to play as well as any guy in this league. What he's done is instill, in my opinion, a work ethic that's as good as any team in our league and almost any league in the country.

Obviously, the team was in very good spirits.

You want this whole environment to be fun for them. You want the game of baseball to be fun. You can have fun and also be involved in a businesslike manner and continue to utilize the techniques that we have been talking about over the course of these four days. You can get something done and have people going into the clubhouse with a good feeling about themselves.

If you want to swing off of live pitching, go right ahead. But recognize the fact of what a strike is and what a ball is. Let's get a good swing at a good pitch.

I know the numbers didn't look too good. However, the thing I was very impressed is that he, for the most part, pitched ahead, threw a lot of strikes and threw some very good breaking pitches. He went after hitters, and that's something we are very interested in seeing.

I'm not advocating we take the first pitch every time we walk up there. But, if you're going to take a swing at a first pitch, have it be a really good swing. If we keep preaching that, there won't have to be a whole lot said if you make a weak out on a marginally bad first pitch. It's not the way you play winning baseball.

I'm not sitting here suggesting that guys don't get hits on an 0-2 or a 1-2 pitch ... but ordinarily, on 0-2, you don't see balls get hammered. When you come up through a minor-league system, you know early on that when you get a hitter 0-2, a ball sitting right in the middle of the plate is not a very good location.

Derek Lowe, for the fourth time in a row, was phenomenal, ... Not good. Not great. Phenomenal. ... I can't say enough good things about Derek Lowe the last four times he's pitched. Unbelievable.

It's going to be tough to score off us in the latter part of the game. If a starter has the know-how and capability of getting 18 outs with a slim lead, we're in pretty good shape.