I'm very happy for Adrian. At the beginning of the year we told him, 'We're playing for you.' He's been here for five years, and he's put his heart and soul into the program. Without him, we would have been in trouble.

We've been practicing and playing for more than five months. We told our guys at the beginning of the year that it was a marathon, not a sprint. Now, it's time to finish it. Our guys have been waiting all year for this.

We're not thinking about losing. We know that we have to win to keep playing. We have to get back to the Sweet 16. We know there are a lot of people doubting us. It's up to us to shut them up.

We're a better defense than we were at the beginning of the year, and that's because we've got so many young players learning a new system ( Ted Cottrell 's) and so many young players playing at this level for the first time. I don't know what everybody else would call it. I'd call it progress.

But suddenly at the beginning of this year, we were told Dennis would leave and players would be sold. It was hard to take when we were close to sixth and had games in hand on the teams in the play-off places. That put paid to any momentum we had.

It made you happy...