We've taken the quality of teams and just increased them in quantity. I don't think anybody truly understands how difficult this league will be day in and day out.

On paper, we seem to be a deep, big and experienced basketball team that should be ranked in the top 10 teams in America.

I don't have any question that was a very well-coached basketball team. He's got complete control of the way that teams runs.

He makes you make plays you don?t want to make. He takes teams out of their offense by the ball pressure he puts on you. He?s really, really been a godsend to us in many ways.

He certainly has had his best year. I would have bit my tongue off last year if I said, ?Let's leave Rashad in for defense.' He's a weapon that very few teams can keep on the bench.

I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't see some different teams in the semifinals than what people are predicting. And I wouldn't be surprised to see someone play four games in four days. That's just the way this season has gone.

Our inside power is very difficult for most teams to handle. Today, we were able to get inside better than we did on Monday.

I think our bracket looks, superficially, to me to be the toughest. That and Oakland look very, very tough. We got a fair but very difficult bracket. What it's got is teams that have been there before. And there's something to being there before.

Well, 1,100 basketball games I've been fortunate to be involved with (and) I've never been quite involved with something like that. It was just an incredible game fought by two teams who gave it everything they possibly have. And I don't know if the teams could have gone another minute. I thought it was an incredible display of what competition is all about.

When teams feel good about themselves, you can tell. I get worried when we sometimes feel too good about ourselves. It's a fine line to walk.

You have seen somewhat the Connecticut you've heard about being disrupted in the tournament because teams do catch up. Teams find ways to catch you when you play 30-something games. We are 30-3, and I think (we) find a way to win.

This was an advertisement for how hard the teams in this league play. Increasing our toughness was one thing I thought we had to do. We knew we could score, but we had to show we could come up with that kind of game like we had other times this season.

This was an advertisement for how hard the teams in this league play.

Both against Albany and tonight, although in different ways, these teams forced Marcus Williams to make plays to beat them. And Marcus took advantage of the opportunity both times. He was magnificent.

I've been in a (locker) room with some talented teams and some teams that bordered on greatness. But I don't know if I've been in a room before with so many kids that have sacrificed so much.

Teams do get into ruts. (Other) teams do play defense.

Some teams play loose, and better than what they have. They were never scared off by the NCAA Tournament; in fact they were inspired by it.

Some teams in their position are scared by the NCAA tournament. They were inspired by it.

That's where we are right now. We could have new teams in the Final Four every year.

A lot of teams play us in a grind, not in a wide-open game. That played to our depth and our experience.

It seems like there are more overtime games, more tough games and the reason is there are more good teams. Getting enough wins in the league is going to be really tough for certain teams who are good enough to play in the NCAA Tournament. Some teams are going to play really well and lose.

It was everything you could ask for in a college game. You had a special environment, passion on both teams and with both coaches ... I would have been disappointed if we had lost. We did enough things to win this game.

It was a rock fight and both teams got involved.

Everybody's talking about how many teams we'll send. Let's see if we can get out of the league first. My greatest fear is that we might beat ourselves up so much that records won't be indicative of how truly good a team is.

The Big East championship means a lot to us. If you can go through 16 games in this league and have to go to the places you do and beat the teams you have to beat, it's really tough. This is a terrific league and to come through it 14-2, I couldn't be prouder of our kids.

It was an incredible game fought by two teams who gave everything they possibly could. I don't know if either team could have gone another minute.

No team has disrupted our half-court offense as much as Washington. It was an incredible game by two teams who fought with everything they had. I don't think either team could have gone another minute.

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.

They came out and pressed us and generally teams that press us allow to get ourselves going. And this was their third game in five days so it made it very difficult for them to stay with us.

It was just an incredible game fought by two teams who gave it everything they possibly had. I just thought it was an incredible display of what competition is all about.

It was just an incredible game fought by two teams that gave it everything they had. I don't know if the teams could have gone another minute.

I think all 12 teams in this tournament are capable of playing in the NCAA tournament and doing well in the NCAA tournament. That is incredibly rare.

You can?t predict this thing ... two, three, four all gone. How do you predict these things? The whole idea that No. 1 gets the easy route ... there are no easy routes. Those teams at 16 are really good, and they have incredible desire to win. By the time you get to 8-9, you?re facing really good teams.

Their arrogance doesn't show. They are not doing any kind of chest thumping that some teams carry, in my opinion, too far.

The college game is controlled by guards, has been and will be. You guys are going to try to name all the great big men who have carried their teams to Final Fours recently. You're not going to come up with any. You're going to come up with teams that are dominated by good inside play and terrific guard play. In the college game, guys that control the ball control the game.

We are lucky to have him as a part of our staff and this promotion is a well-deserved acknowledgment of the part that he has played in the phenomenal success of our basketball program.

My fear is being flat (for the start of league play). When we lost to Boston College last year to start the Big East, we couldn't raise ourselves to that level. Having not played that kind of competition recently, I have concerns, but we have to play these two games first.

I don't find it unusual for Kentucky, with its incredible history and a great coach like Tubby (Smith), for it to turn into that type of game. I thought Kentucky played awfully good.

I don't think we played an ounce of basketball after that.

I don't think we shot well (38.7 percent), but I think we played well and yet it took us 30 minutes to shake them, maybe 35 minutes to shake them. That's just by their tenacity and how hard they played. Providence has a young team. The three guys who I think played really well for us happened to be seniors and that makes a difference in college basketball.

I think it's the very charm of exactly what this tournament is about and I truly believe that. We played Gonzaga in 1999 and everybody in Phoenix was attached to them. That's a very natural thing.

I think depth has played a role for us. In this game, it won?t.

Overall, I thought it was a good win for us, but I don't think we played as well as we're capable of.

Regardless of our success over the years, whatever it may be, Providence has always played us close. Providence has given us a lot of problems.

I thought it was a good win for us. I don't think we played as well as we should have. ... Overall I think we did a decent job on defense, but the thing that is bothering me a little bit is we were inconsistent.

Will it hurt us? Sure. Jeff has been a factor in every game he's played in. Hopefully the depth that we have will come into play in this game.

We really played our best basketball. It was one of the few games I can say you could just enjoy. It was just really a tremendous basketball game for us and hopefully it's a peek into what we're capable of. Seasons are really funny. But I think those things are good. We jump right now into a hot stove.

We caught them when they were playing terrific basketball. And we caught them off guard. I could see it on tape that they just didn't expect us to be as good as we were. That may have been, at particular points, as good as we've played offensively. We really, really played well.

We played them twice this year and on both of those occasions we were able to physically dominate them inside. We did a tremendous job last Saturday, won by 18 points and dominated them again. They turned the tide on us tonight. They physically dominated us in every aspect of the game.

We haven't played defense really well the past couple of weeks and that was just highlighted there.