I don't need to say anything more. I think that both sides are moving on from something like that. You don't use things like that as an opportunity to create a rift between two clubs.

Obviously, that's the hot topic these days. I've done everything I possibly can to keep Freddy involved, and he has responded big-time. You have to get Freddy at-bats, but you also have to give those other guys a chance to jump-start themselves.

He's done a great job and he's really shown me he has a chance to be a very special player. He's a tremendous talent.

It has a chance to look like that.

I think you bring the best out of your players when you sit and study and look very closely at what their capabilities are and then try to find situations where their talents have the best chance to come out,

(Playing the Dodgers) is kind of special. It was five years that I spent there. In my opinion they were five very special years. There were a lot of very special things we accomplished there. There were things that some people thought we were never going to have a chance to do, but we did.

I think he has a chance be a terrific offensive player. But part of becoming a great offensive player is having a full understanding of the strike zone and understand what pitchers try to do to him in certain situations. The only way you get to that point is you keep carrying the bat to the plate.

We're not quitting, that's for sure. We've been in every single game and we've had a chance to win every single game.

We had something going on in the fifth, it looked like we had a chance to get back in the game, but they cut the inning off. We took some good at-bats off him, we created some opportunity for ourselves ... but from watching him, he's got a crisp fastball and his breaking ball also is very sharp.

You better believe he's having a terrific spring. He has a chance to be a real player at the major-league level.

Did the starting pitcher give you a chance every fifth day to go out there and win? -- that's the biggest element I look at. (Santos) was pretty good at that last year.

Back in May, when the Padres went something like 22-6, they had a chance to slam the door, throw the lock around the handle and close it off for everybody else. And it didn't happen. So it's not a matter of anybody putting on any type of serious charge thus far, it's a matter of teams just winning some games here and there.

You don't want to get too overly involved in velocity at this point. You want to give him a chance to stretch his arm out.

I'm not saying things would have necessarily been different if Sean was in the lineup but I think it would have helped to have a hitter who combined to strike out less 100 times over the last two seasons up in the situation. You need to make contact with a man on second and none out, and I think Sean would have given us a great chance of doing that.

I like challenges. I like it when people say, 'You don't have a chance to succeed there.'

I like challenges. I like it when people say, 'You don't have a chance to succeed there.'

Challenges are something that I like very, very much, ... I like hearing people say or maybe think that this is a situation you don't have a chance to succeed in, I'm very challenged by that.

The challenge is something I like very much, ... I take a lot of pride in people saying this is a situation where you don't have a chance to succeed. I'm really challenged by that.

The only place down the road I want to see them is in Indianapolis at the Final Four. They come loaded and knock you down. That is a great team with heart.

Maybe it was subtraction by addition. I'm not sure of anything because I'm so stunned by the way my team played.

Obviously they're a tournament team. I thought they were a tournament team yesterday.

Obviously, the team was in very good spirits.

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'd like to congratulate the St. John's team for a terrific effort.

I don't expect us to play poorly, although I could feel entirely different a week from now. What we do know is that this team is a lot better; we've gotten better. Everyone has improved, and that makes us able to play a lot of different ways in February and March.

I don't know what kind of adjustments you can make when Allan Ray is hitting 28-footers. Villanova is a very unique team for anyone to play.

I can feel the emotions start to build, ... I've had conversations with my first recruit at Northeastern, with eight kids from my Dedham High School team that won 21 straight games, a lot of phone calls from my former players ... it's an exciting time for me.

He was very outspoken and talked about the kind of sacrifices he was willing to make for the team to win. You can't get a kid to do that unless it comes from the heart. And trust me it does.

We just have to be hungry...and this team has done that. The crowd will certainly be into it (today) and I'm sure the kids will be into it.

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.

We've got to take away 3-point shooting and not get fatigued by the shot clock. They make as many shots under 12 seconds as any team you're going to play.

He's done a great job there. He has a team that puts constant offensive and defensive pressure on you. They're deep. They run. They're quick. They're just a relentless team. A lot of that has to do with his personality. That's how he coaches, and he doesn't accept excuses when it comes to effort.

I think we showed up like a team that had glanced at our record and saw we had beaten Syracuse handily both times. My point is that in a tournament, no one really cares what seed you are or whether you beat someone before. It's the 40 minutes you're playing today that's important.

Our strengths were not our strengths today. We've been talking about the things we don't have. The things we do have were our biggest weakness today. We've never been overrated as a team. We've just been, quite frankly, misconstrued as a team at times. But we have great heart.

Overall, a tremendous performance by Albany. They were magnificent, but I'm really proud that it didn't knock our team out. It knocked us down, but not out.

Our 3-0 record and their 3-0 record is going to clash. Whichever team is able to impose its will and style on the other team is going to win.

Regardless of our successes, failures, whatever it may be, it seems like Providence always plays us close. I think it's 3-3 over the last six games. Our national championship team (2004), they showed up at 12 o'clock at the (Hartford) Civic Center and beat us pretty good.

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.

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.

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.

We're not a team that can score off the dribble and break you down. We need to find other ways if we're not running. If we're going to score in a half-court set, Hilton has to step up. We look to him now.

We're not a team that breaks you down off the dribble. We have to do it in other ways, on the full-court break or with our power game inside. (Wednesday), South Florida took us out of what we should have run. We stopped setting screens, stopped doing some of the things we're capable of doing.

We're not a team of breakdown individuals. We're much more a team of execution. We're going to have to work on execution tomorrow, the next day and continue. It's fine when we're running. It's not quite as fine in the half-court set. Yet I've seen us in the half-court set be brilliant. I'm not sure we truly have a guy we would run five plays in a row for.

We revised our scouting report on Kentucky because of the way Perry played. This will be one of the few times where we face a team that has the size up front that we do.

We have weaknesses; we know that. So we have to become an execution team, particularly on a team that comes up and ball-pressures us, a team that says 'beat me off the dribble.' And you can, but they're daring you and trying to take you out of your offense.

We are delighted with the reaction that the Muppets are getting from some of the top fashion boutiques around the world, and we are proud to be able to team up with today's stars to do something special for Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

We're coming in with a team that can arguably match up with any team in the country. Hopefully, we solved some of the size and physical problems we had last year. We, at times, can be very, very big.

We were a blizzard inside, too, in that second half. I'm not usually impressed by my team much. But we were really good.

This team is to be reckoned with in the NCAA tournament. This team has a chance to get itself to Indianapolis (site of the Final Four) and, just like everybody else, has a chance to go home.

What really hurt us a lot of times is another team playing well and us not playing so well.