Colorado-Kansas Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“Look our guys battled tonight. There's no doubt about it. I mean, you don't out rebound KU by 15 if you don't come to battle. And that was one of the keys of the game. But we got to do more than just one thing well on any given night. And that's kind of been the story of our year. Against Baylor, we guarded, didn't rebound very well, got the free throw line tonight, we rebounded well, didn't guard very well, didn't get the free throw line. KU beats us by nine there and Hunter Dickinson's a beast down there. He's a good player, and I didn't think we handled him very well, but our guys battled, and they played hard, and I don't fault our effort. I don't fault our toughness. We just have to be more consistent in various parts of the game, not just one on any given night. And right now, when we come up a little bit short, we've usually done one thing pretty well. Tonight, we rebounded the ball well, but we don't do two or three or four things well, which is what you have to do to beat a team like KU because our margin for error is very small. And we get 24, I thought, open looks from three. I didn't think we had too many bad looks. They were open looks. But five for 24, it's gonna be hard to beat a team. And we lose. We missed what, 40 some shots. So we should have 18 offensive rebounds, but our guys efforts there, we just gotta, just gotta regroup. And we got three games left, we haven't won in a road yet. That's a challenge I laid to our guys in the locker room. And we got two opportunities for that, and then we got five seniors for senior nights. So coming down the stretch here, and this team has not given up. They are continuing to battle, and I got great respect for not just Julian and Bangot that are here with me right now, but for all the guys in that locker room. They've not given up, and they've not given up on each other, and that's a testament to their character.”
On why Hunter Dickinson is so hard to guard:
“Well, the thing that makes him so difficult is, obviously, his size, not only just his height, but you know his weight, but his understanding of where to position his body, and you're not going to move him. So you got to beat him to the spot. And if you don't beat him to the spot, you're in trouble. Our game plan tonight with him was when the ball was above the foul line and extended, we wanted to be three-quarters. If the ball came in, it had to come in on a lob. And then you got to move your feet because you're not going to win a wrestling contest with that dude. You have to move your feet to get behind him and make him score over you. So, Bangot is 6’11”, and he can block shots. Elijah is 6’11”, and he's got some beef to him that maybe Bangot doesn't have. Those were the two guys that had him most of the night. Then, you have to have help from your guards when you're playing behind him. And the problem we had, and it happened at KU as well, they run an overload play, and it's a good play, and they burned us on it. At their place, I think they got it three or four times. Tonight, they got two or three as well. But on that play, if you're on three quarters, and that lob comes in, and you go high side, he's going to catch the ball, he's going to finish because he keeps it high. He's got great hands and is a good finisher. We didn't execute the game plan on that. Now, if the ball goes to the corner, we got to front him and not let it come in, and then they're going to flash the opposite big, and then they're going to go high, low. And now it's you got to move your feet and play smart. Post defense is not for it's not for [explicitive]. It's for grown men. You have to be a grown man to play post-defense. With Hunter Dickenson, you have to do it with your brain and your feet. We didn't play very well with our brain in our post-defense, and our footwork wasn't good enough. Like Bangot said, he's an All-American and it's a tough matchup for BD. He's got to have a brand. He's young, and he hadn't played against a guy like that. Now he now he has. What makes Bangot so intriguing to me as a player is the fact that I would think he's going to be able to guard five positions before he leaves here. But he's not there yet, so he's got to keep learning and improving, and I believe he will.”
On Elijah Malone’s performance and improvement
“I think Elijah's starting to figure it out. This is a new level for him, and it's taken him a while to figure it out. He's made three plays now defensively, one against Iowa State, one against Baylor, one tonight against Kansas, that are defensive plays he wouldn't have made at all, even three two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we played Kansas. He didn't make those plays. He's starting to figure it out as a ball screen defender, and getting better there. He's a good low post scorer. He had trouble tonight with Dickinson, he's a big body, and Elijah's gotta understand, when does he need to use his strength and his muscle, and when does he need to use his skill? When Hunter Dickinson's guarding you, you gotta use your skill. He did a great job of that in Lawrence. Tonight, he didn't do as good a job, but I thought his activity level and his effort level is getting better, there's no doubt about it, and his rebounding is getting better.”
On how Bangot Dak can get to the level that Hunter Dickinson is on:
“I talked to Bangot. I pulled him aside from practice yesterday, and I said, ‘The biggest thing you've got to understand is to be an effective player at this level, you've got to be consistent, and you want to be consistently good. Right now, you're doing some really, really good things on offense and on defense, but you're not consistent in either one of those. And so for you to become the player you want to become, you got to be consistent.’ And I agree, I've looked at this like his freshman year. I'm so mad at myself for not making Bangot redshirt last year rather than asking him. He didn't want to, and he didn't. It's unfortunate because he'd have another year of college in the back end that he's not going to have, and I think he's going to regret that. I'm going to regret it for him. But with that being said, you have to keep getting better. The worst thing you want to hear as a player is, ‘Oh, that guy's got potential.’ All that means you're not getting it done now. It means you're going to be good tomorrow, but you ain't very good today. And I think that guy has that potential, but he's done some good things for us this year. He just has to be more consistent, and he knows that. And it gets back to Sean's point. He has to learn. And the quicker he learns, the better he'll become a great, great player. If it takes him a while, it may take him till he's a senior. I don't know. Everybody learns a different race.”
On lessons from tonight’s game and then last 10 weeks
“I think you learn every time you step on the floor. I think you learn in practice, or you don't learn. There's a flip side of that. You don't just you don't learn just because you play, you learn by being attentive, concentrating, listening, seeing and watching film. You can learn from Hunter Dickinson, as a post player on our team. You can learn from KJ Adams and how hard he rolls to the rim. You can learn a lot, and you can learn from wins. The other night against Baylor, we didn't play very well down the stretch. We still won a game, but we got to learn from the mistakes we made down the stretch in that game. Tonight, we got to learn that you play KU and your margin is very small, so you got to make them earn every shot. We gave them a lot of easy ones, and we didn't execute defense to our defensive game plan well enough. You learn every time you step on the floor, whether it's in practice, whether it's a game, whether you win, whether you lose. It's not like you learn more from losses than you do win. It's just more frustrating, and we've had a lot of frustration this year.
On the break until Sunday:
“I fight myself because we need—I think mentally—our kids need a little bit of a break. But you go five for 24 from three, it's hard to say, "Okay, let's take two days off." I'm not saying we have to grind them in practice. We're going to take tomorrow off for sure. You got to take one day off a week per NCAA rules. But we have to make shots, and the only way you make shots is you get reps in the gym. Just like the only way you get bigger/stronger is you get in the weight room, you eat right. So we got to get better, and we've got a very, very short period of time. So I don't know the answer to that right now. I know we're going to take tomorrow off, and then Wednesday, I'll see. And we're—I'm not going to grind them, with practice, I know that. But ideally, I'd love to give them two days off, and I might end up doing that, but I haven't made that decision yet. I do know, whatever we do, we gotta make sure on Sunday in Manhattan, Kansas, we are emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually ready to go and try to get a road win that we've not been able to get this year. So we got two opportunities. First one, Sunday in Manhattan.”
Colorado Players
Bangot Dak, So., F
On what this game meant to him
“It just means I could play out there with people like that and against a team like that. Just going out there and competing. Proving what you can do out there, and that you can play out there.”
On his dunks tonight
“My coach just tells me to put a lot of pressure on the rim because I'm a rim threat. So I was trying to do that a lot tonight. That also puts an emphasis on offensive rebounding. So I try to do that too.”
On playing against Dickinson
“It’s hard because he's an all American player and he's 7’2”. Just trying to go out there and battle him and push him out of spots is hard because he knows where to get. He knows where to get touches. I just try to think of the next play with him. But it's hard to get him out of the paint.”
Julian Hammond III, Sr., G
“It was cool because we haven’t really had that this year as much. It's nice to see a lot of people come out here and have a good environment at home. All the places that we go on the road always have good environments so it was cool.”
On keeping team energy
“We go on runs and it gets loud. They're also a good team so they're gonna score and they're gonna go on their runs. But when they do, we can't let them go on six or eight point runs. We kept on getting it within two or within four, but then they’d stretch it back to nine.”
On Kansas’ defense
“They do a good job against everybody. Tonight, I really didn't think it was them. I really thought it was us. We were just missing a lot of good looks. A lot of good shooter had a lot of really good shots, but they just didn't go down”
Kansas Head Coach Bill Self
On Hunter Dickinson’s performance
“Yeah, I thought he was the best player in the game, obviously. He was terrific. He got us off to a great start, him and KJ (Adams). They killed us on the glass. If it weren't for Hunt (Hunter Dickinson), we would have been annihilated on the glass. He played like an All American tonight.”
On the difference between tonight and the last time CU played KU
“To be honest with you, in Lawrence, it was kind of similar. We had control of the game, and then they came back and made it interesting. Tonight, we had control of the game, and then obviously they came back and even took the lead. I can't speak for Tad, but I thought they were a better team tonight than they were two weeks ago, and I think that's evidenced by their scores and other games. I actually thought we were a better team tonight, too, than we were two weeks ago. We made the game hard on ourself in a lot of ways tonight, but Colorado also had some missed opportunities. So it was a good, competitive game. We desperately needed it (the win). So I'm proud of our guys, because we did hang in there and fight after it got kind of hard.”
On Kansas’s performance down the stretch
“I think we executed better down the stretch. We bailed them out a couple of times by fouling and they made free throws, but the things that had been giving us problems in other games, we actually were a lot better tonight down the stretch.”
On expectations for Hunter Dickinson
“I actually thought he would do it (score 30 points) multiple times a year, and he's been inconsistent in doing it like that, but we've also been inconsistent in helping him. It's hard when you have a hard time spacing the floor and doing some different things when you have your best players in the game. But tonight, he scored in a variety of ways. He was a power player and a finesse player tonight.”
On building confidence
“I think it'll do wonders for us. We're 2-0. Our season started against Oklahoma State because we screwed up the conference season, and all we can do is finish the conference season strong to prepare us for the postseason. So we're 2-0 right now, that's how we're looking at it. We're undefeated, so I think we're a little bit more confident.”
Kansas Players
Hunter Dickinson, Gr., C
How you would describe the win
“It was a very good win versus a tough opponent on the road. My teammates really found me in good positions. I think I did a good job of staying close to the basket and my teammates did a really good job of finding me.”
On how important was it getting off to that 14-4 lead on the road
“Super important. That's been the tell tale of how the game is going to go. Especially in Utah, we came out and got down 8-0 both games. That's just so hard on the road because teams are going to play really well. When you give them an eight point advantage like that to start the game, it's super hard. We did a really good job of putting ourselves in a good position by going out to an early lead. I think that really sparked us in the first half, and we were able to weather the storm through their runs.”
On getting a steal on the defensive end and coach expecting that to continue
“Yeah I showed it, so I have to do it all the time.”
On what you thought of the support from the Kansas fans
“It was huge. When we came out to that crowd, it felt almost like a home game. I think that's why we played so well to start the game. We weren't truly on the road. I felt like it was a neutral site game. I feel like they had a big part in it. We might have to buy some extra tickets when we play in Houston.”
On building confidence
“I think so. I think the dude with the most confidence right now is probably Diggy (David Coit). He's really embraced the when you're open shoot it mentality, and I think that's really helped us. Him, Rylan and Zeke are our three best shooters. They have to keep shooting because it really opens up stuff for me and KJ, and spreads the defense. Teams are going to give them some open looks just because of the way we run our offense. They have to keep shooting and they've been making them so far.”
KJ Adams, Sr, F
What did for your confidence starting out strong early on offense
“It was big. We haven't started off games pretty well, and neither have I. Getting those first two got my confidence up, and then lost it a little bit, but got it back when it mattered.”
On what you guys did to finish it out
“We made that game way harder for ourselves than it really needed to be, but we hunkered down and didn’t focus on all the bonehead plays that each one of us made, especially me. We just tried to get defensive rebounds and get some big stops.”
On what you think is getting you guys in trouble on the defensive glass
“Nothing really too much. We just have to be more focused on that. Some don't bounce the right way. When you play in the Big-12 you can't afford the rebounds that we gave up.”
On what you thought of the support from the Kansas fans
“It was huge. When we came out to that crowd, it felt almost like a home game. I think that's why we played so well to start the game. We weren't truly on the road. I felt like it was a neutral site game. I feel like they had a big part in it. We might have to buy some extra tickets when we play in Houston.”
On embracing the new season mentality after a tough road trip
“We just have to look forward. Like you said, have a new team mindset. We’re now 2-0 and trying to go for three now and build on that.”
On building confidence
“Yeah I think we are building momentum. We all like each other off the court, so that helps a lot. I think once we start clicking together on the court and start doing what we're capable of, we're going to be a really good team.”
On Hunter Dickinson
“He's a beast. He's my All-American for the season. He played like it tonight, and I think he's going to keep building on that. He's going to have a really good end of the season.”
Opening Statement
“Look our guys battled tonight. There's no doubt about it. I mean, you don't out rebound KU by 15 if you don't come to battle. And that was one of the keys of the game. But we got to do more than just one thing well on any given night. And that's kind of been the story of our year. Against Baylor, we guarded, didn't rebound very well, got the free throw line tonight, we rebounded well, didn't guard very well, didn't get the free throw line. KU beats us by nine there and Hunter Dickinson's a beast down there. He's a good player, and I didn't think we handled him very well, but our guys battled, and they played hard, and I don't fault our effort. I don't fault our toughness. We just have to be more consistent in various parts of the game, not just one on any given night. And right now, when we come up a little bit short, we've usually done one thing pretty well. Tonight, we rebounded the ball well, but we don't do two or three or four things well, which is what you have to do to beat a team like KU because our margin for error is very small. And we get 24, I thought, open looks from three. I didn't think we had too many bad looks. They were open looks. But five for 24, it's gonna be hard to beat a team. And we lose. We missed what, 40 some shots. So we should have 18 offensive rebounds, but our guys efforts there, we just gotta, just gotta regroup. And we got three games left, we haven't won in a road yet. That's a challenge I laid to our guys in the locker room. And we got two opportunities for that, and then we got five seniors for senior nights. So coming down the stretch here, and this team has not given up. They are continuing to battle, and I got great respect for not just Julian and Bangot that are here with me right now, but for all the guys in that locker room. They've not given up, and they've not given up on each other, and that's a testament to their character.”
On why Hunter Dickinson is so hard to guard:
“Well, the thing that makes him so difficult is, obviously, his size, not only just his height, but you know his weight, but his understanding of where to position his body, and you're not going to move him. So you got to beat him to the spot. And if you don't beat him to the spot, you're in trouble. Our game plan tonight with him was when the ball was above the foul line and extended, we wanted to be three-quarters. If the ball came in, it had to come in on a lob. And then you got to move your feet because you're not going to win a wrestling contest with that dude. You have to move your feet to get behind him and make him score over you. So, Bangot is 6’11”, and he can block shots. Elijah is 6’11”, and he's got some beef to him that maybe Bangot doesn't have. Those were the two guys that had him most of the night. Then, you have to have help from your guards when you're playing behind him. And the problem we had, and it happened at KU as well, they run an overload play, and it's a good play, and they burned us on it. At their place, I think they got it three or four times. Tonight, they got two or three as well. But on that play, if you're on three quarters, and that lob comes in, and you go high side, he's going to catch the ball, he's going to finish because he keeps it high. He's got great hands and is a good finisher. We didn't execute the game plan on that. Now, if the ball goes to the corner, we got to front him and not let it come in, and then they're going to flash the opposite big, and then they're going to go high, low. And now it's you got to move your feet and play smart. Post defense is not for it's not for [explicitive]. It's for grown men. You have to be a grown man to play post-defense. With Hunter Dickenson, you have to do it with your brain and your feet. We didn't play very well with our brain in our post-defense, and our footwork wasn't good enough. Like Bangot said, he's an All-American and it's a tough matchup for BD. He's got to have a brand. He's young, and he hadn't played against a guy like that. Now he now he has. What makes Bangot so intriguing to me as a player is the fact that I would think he's going to be able to guard five positions before he leaves here. But he's not there yet, so he's got to keep learning and improving, and I believe he will.”
On Elijah Malone’s performance and improvement
“I think Elijah's starting to figure it out. This is a new level for him, and it's taken him a while to figure it out. He's made three plays now defensively, one against Iowa State, one against Baylor, one tonight against Kansas, that are defensive plays he wouldn't have made at all, even three two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we played Kansas. He didn't make those plays. He's starting to figure it out as a ball screen defender, and getting better there. He's a good low post scorer. He had trouble tonight with Dickinson, he's a big body, and Elijah's gotta understand, when does he need to use his strength and his muscle, and when does he need to use his skill? When Hunter Dickinson's guarding you, you gotta use your skill. He did a great job of that in Lawrence. Tonight, he didn't do as good a job, but I thought his activity level and his effort level is getting better, there's no doubt about it, and his rebounding is getting better.”
On how Bangot Dak can get to the level that Hunter Dickinson is on:
“I talked to Bangot. I pulled him aside from practice yesterday, and I said, ‘The biggest thing you've got to understand is to be an effective player at this level, you've got to be consistent, and you want to be consistently good. Right now, you're doing some really, really good things on offense and on defense, but you're not consistent in either one of those. And so for you to become the player you want to become, you got to be consistent.’ And I agree, I've looked at this like his freshman year. I'm so mad at myself for not making Bangot redshirt last year rather than asking him. He didn't want to, and he didn't. It's unfortunate because he'd have another year of college in the back end that he's not going to have, and I think he's going to regret that. I'm going to regret it for him. But with that being said, you have to keep getting better. The worst thing you want to hear as a player is, ‘Oh, that guy's got potential.’ All that means you're not getting it done now. It means you're going to be good tomorrow, but you ain't very good today. And I think that guy has that potential, but he's done some good things for us this year. He just has to be more consistent, and he knows that. And it gets back to Sean's point. He has to learn. And the quicker he learns, the better he'll become a great, great player. If it takes him a while, it may take him till he's a senior. I don't know. Everybody learns a different race.”
On lessons from tonight’s game and then last 10 weeks
“I think you learn every time you step on the floor. I think you learn in practice, or you don't learn. There's a flip side of that. You don't just you don't learn just because you play, you learn by being attentive, concentrating, listening, seeing and watching film. You can learn from Hunter Dickinson, as a post player on our team. You can learn from KJ Adams and how hard he rolls to the rim. You can learn a lot, and you can learn from wins. The other night against Baylor, we didn't play very well down the stretch. We still won a game, but we got to learn from the mistakes we made down the stretch in that game. Tonight, we got to learn that you play KU and your margin is very small, so you got to make them earn every shot. We gave them a lot of easy ones, and we didn't execute defense to our defensive game plan well enough. You learn every time you step on the floor, whether it's in practice, whether it's a game, whether you win, whether you lose. It's not like you learn more from losses than you do win. It's just more frustrating, and we've had a lot of frustration this year.
On the break until Sunday:
“I fight myself because we need—I think mentally—our kids need a little bit of a break. But you go five for 24 from three, it's hard to say, "Okay, let's take two days off." I'm not saying we have to grind them in practice. We're going to take tomorrow off for sure. You got to take one day off a week per NCAA rules. But we have to make shots, and the only way you make shots is you get reps in the gym. Just like the only way you get bigger/stronger is you get in the weight room, you eat right. So we got to get better, and we've got a very, very short period of time. So I don't know the answer to that right now. I know we're going to take tomorrow off, and then Wednesday, I'll see. And we're—I'm not going to grind them, with practice, I know that. But ideally, I'd love to give them two days off, and I might end up doing that, but I haven't made that decision yet. I do know, whatever we do, we gotta make sure on Sunday in Manhattan, Kansas, we are emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually ready to go and try to get a road win that we've not been able to get this year. So we got two opportunities. First one, Sunday in Manhattan.”
Colorado Players
Bangot Dak, So., F
On what this game meant to him
“It just means I could play out there with people like that and against a team like that. Just going out there and competing. Proving what you can do out there, and that you can play out there.”
On his dunks tonight
“My coach just tells me to put a lot of pressure on the rim because I'm a rim threat. So I was trying to do that a lot tonight. That also puts an emphasis on offensive rebounding. So I try to do that too.”
On playing against Dickinson
“It’s hard because he's an all American player and he's 7’2”. Just trying to go out there and battle him and push him out of spots is hard because he knows where to get. He knows where to get touches. I just try to think of the next play with him. But it's hard to get him out of the paint.”
Julian Hammond III, Sr., G
“It was cool because we haven’t really had that this year as much. It's nice to see a lot of people come out here and have a good environment at home. All the places that we go on the road always have good environments so it was cool.”
On keeping team energy
“We go on runs and it gets loud. They're also a good team so they're gonna score and they're gonna go on their runs. But when they do, we can't let them go on six or eight point runs. We kept on getting it within two or within four, but then they’d stretch it back to nine.”
On Kansas’ defense
“They do a good job against everybody. Tonight, I really didn't think it was them. I really thought it was us. We were just missing a lot of good looks. A lot of good shooter had a lot of really good shots, but they just didn't go down”
Kansas Head Coach Bill Self
On Hunter Dickinson’s performance
“Yeah, I thought he was the best player in the game, obviously. He was terrific. He got us off to a great start, him and KJ (Adams). They killed us on the glass. If it weren't for Hunt (Hunter Dickinson), we would have been annihilated on the glass. He played like an All American tonight.”
On the difference between tonight and the last time CU played KU
“To be honest with you, in Lawrence, it was kind of similar. We had control of the game, and then they came back and made it interesting. Tonight, we had control of the game, and then obviously they came back and even took the lead. I can't speak for Tad, but I thought they were a better team tonight than they were two weeks ago, and I think that's evidenced by their scores and other games. I actually thought we were a better team tonight, too, than we were two weeks ago. We made the game hard on ourself in a lot of ways tonight, but Colorado also had some missed opportunities. So it was a good, competitive game. We desperately needed it (the win). So I'm proud of our guys, because we did hang in there and fight after it got kind of hard.”
On Kansas’s performance down the stretch
“I think we executed better down the stretch. We bailed them out a couple of times by fouling and they made free throws, but the things that had been giving us problems in other games, we actually were a lot better tonight down the stretch.”
On expectations for Hunter Dickinson
“I actually thought he would do it (score 30 points) multiple times a year, and he's been inconsistent in doing it like that, but we've also been inconsistent in helping him. It's hard when you have a hard time spacing the floor and doing some different things when you have your best players in the game. But tonight, he scored in a variety of ways. He was a power player and a finesse player tonight.”
On building confidence
“I think it'll do wonders for us. We're 2-0. Our season started against Oklahoma State because we screwed up the conference season, and all we can do is finish the conference season strong to prepare us for the postseason. So we're 2-0 right now, that's how we're looking at it. We're undefeated, so I think we're a little bit more confident.”
Kansas Players
Hunter Dickinson, Gr., C
How you would describe the win
“It was a very good win versus a tough opponent on the road. My teammates really found me in good positions. I think I did a good job of staying close to the basket and my teammates did a really good job of finding me.”
On how important was it getting off to that 14-4 lead on the road
“Super important. That's been the tell tale of how the game is going to go. Especially in Utah, we came out and got down 8-0 both games. That's just so hard on the road because teams are going to play really well. When you give them an eight point advantage like that to start the game, it's super hard. We did a really good job of putting ourselves in a good position by going out to an early lead. I think that really sparked us in the first half, and we were able to weather the storm through their runs.”
On getting a steal on the defensive end and coach expecting that to continue
“Yeah I showed it, so I have to do it all the time.”
On what you thought of the support from the Kansas fans
“It was huge. When we came out to that crowd, it felt almost like a home game. I think that's why we played so well to start the game. We weren't truly on the road. I felt like it was a neutral site game. I feel like they had a big part in it. We might have to buy some extra tickets when we play in Houston.”
On building confidence
“I think so. I think the dude with the most confidence right now is probably Diggy (David Coit). He's really embraced the when you're open shoot it mentality, and I think that's really helped us. Him, Rylan and Zeke are our three best shooters. They have to keep shooting because it really opens up stuff for me and KJ, and spreads the defense. Teams are going to give them some open looks just because of the way we run our offense. They have to keep shooting and they've been making them so far.”
KJ Adams, Sr, F
What did for your confidence starting out strong early on offense
“It was big. We haven't started off games pretty well, and neither have I. Getting those first two got my confidence up, and then lost it a little bit, but got it back when it mattered.”
On what you guys did to finish it out
“We made that game way harder for ourselves than it really needed to be, but we hunkered down and didn’t focus on all the bonehead plays that each one of us made, especially me. We just tried to get defensive rebounds and get some big stops.”
On what you think is getting you guys in trouble on the defensive glass
“Nothing really too much. We just have to be more focused on that. Some don't bounce the right way. When you play in the Big-12 you can't afford the rebounds that we gave up.”
On what you thought of the support from the Kansas fans
“It was huge. When we came out to that crowd, it felt almost like a home game. I think that's why we played so well to start the game. We weren't truly on the road. I felt like it was a neutral site game. I feel like they had a big part in it. We might have to buy some extra tickets when we play in Houston.”
On embracing the new season mentality after a tough road trip
“We just have to look forward. Like you said, have a new team mindset. We’re now 2-0 and trying to go for three now and build on that.”
On building confidence
“Yeah I think we are building momentum. We all like each other off the court, so that helps a lot. I think once we start clicking together on the court and start doing what we're capable of, we're going to be a really good team.”
On Hunter Dickinson
“He's a beast. He's my All-American for the season. He played like it tonight, and I think he's going to keep building on that. He's going to have a really good end of the season.”