March 5, 2006

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Loyola Marymount Head Coach Rodney Tention
I'm really proud of our guys. I thought they stepped up to meet the challenge of a very good team tonight.

We knew coming in, we stumbled getting in here, but we never lost our focus. In practice we really got back to the basics, and these guys worked hard. We prepared all year to win games and that was what we came in here to do tonight.

They've really worked hard. They've been working hard all year. Our record is not indicative of how we played. I'm really proud of them. I'm really excited about the opportunity to play the championship game tomorrow night. We'll go to drawing board tomorrow and get prepared to play a very good team tomorrow, a very good team.

I thought Monday night, Saint Mary's did a great job...and that was a big focal point for us in practice these last few days. Getting down and taking a personal challenge each guy to stop each guy from getting into the middle.

We still could've done a better job in the second half as far as limiting them on their field-goal percentage, but our effort tonight was much better than our last few games, especially on the focus and intensity.

I've always told them if you going to make a mistake, you make sure you're doing it going hard and foul them pretty hard. Luckily Wayne (Hunter) is not one of their better free-throw shooters but then he got the tip there on the missed free-throw and the rebound that got it back out and we ran out the clock there.

We're going to work hard to make sure that whatever he (Adam Morrison) gets, he's going to have to work for. He's an exceptional player, an exceptional offensive player and we're going to treat the fact that he scored 44 points against us as a personal challenge to make sure that we don't let him get those looks that he got.

(About Morrison) He's not the only guy we got to worry about.

They just didn't shoot it well. Fortunately for us tonight they didn't shoot well.

Loyola Marymount's Matthew Knight
(About guarding Kickert) Coach told us tonight that it was a personal challenge. We know how good of a player he is. He's Saint Mary's leading scorer of all time. We know we have to guard him if we want to have a chance to win. Coach told us to deny everything it obviously frustrates him.

Loyola Marymount's Brandon Worthy
(About the bye to the Semi's) I definitely think it helped our team. It gave us an opportunity to prepare for Saint Mary's to rest up our bodies because they had to play last night and we had a six-day period where we could just prepare for them.

That four-game losing streak was out of our minds.

Saint Mary's Head Coach Randy Bennett
We got out-hustled on the boards bad. We didn't shoot real well. They were just more aggressive than we were and usually that makes a difference in these games.

(on Daniel Kickert) If I made a few comments, it wouldn't do him justice. He's been a great leader, he's been a great competitor, and he's a great person. We'll be good in the future because of him.