I think a lot of credit has to go to Louisville when you have a leader out. I'm not sure how well our offense would have been if we didn't have Marcus Williams. Marcus is not the scorer, but he is the runner of the team. He gets the ball to the right people in the right time at the right spots. They didn't have that tonight. They worked like crazy.
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.
He can get people the ball from 90 feet to two feet. I've never seen anybody get to the rim, and as a big guy comes over, at the last second put the ball in the hands of a big guy and have the guy dunk. He reminds me of Jason Kidd in that he could get that double-figure rebound game, he could get steals, assists, he certainly can shoot the basketball.
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.
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.
I think in his second year with us, Caron started to realize in January just how good he could be with a lot of pushing and prodding. Ben was the same way. I think Rudy (Gay) is starting to understand some of the great gifts that he has and he's starting to showcase them a lot more and just becoming a better player.