La Salle University Athletics

Opening Statement:
"It has been Groundhogs Day for us. In terms of positives, I think Johnnie is battling. Amar is getting more confident offensively. Cleon is playing harder all the time. Obviously, we are finding it hard to matchup against the better teams in the A-10. Even when we do a good job they will help, they will skip it, they will find an open guy, and they will knock down a deep three. Rhode Island played well and they are banged up, they deserve a lot of credit. (Jarvis) Garrett to play the way he did with that mask on and limited practice is astounding to me. We have a hard time defending people. Offensively, I think I have to go back to the drawing board to do something better to help our team. It's not good. There is the cliché, when you go through hard times you want to go through with good people. I love our kids and that is part of the reason that we are in this situation. I under recruited this team, we have some good players but they don't have enough help. I probably under recruited it because we have a lot of guys sitting out. I probably misevaluated a couple of things. I thought they work so hard and are so close that they have a lot of qualities of a good team. I just didn't give them a chance with what I put together, and that's on me. I have good kids and they are good players and they are doing what they can, but it's my fault."
 
On learning from this season:
"In this particular game we had some guys who did not play anywhere near their best. Amar is really getting some more confidence. I like Cleon's consistent effort; he had a lapse in the beginning of the second half but other than that he is really trying. Johnnie is learning from his mistakes. Jordan has an impossible task where he always gets the other team's best defender. He is playing hurt. I do look for positives, there are positives, I think we will be a much better team next year just because they will have help and we won't have half a team and we won't be inexperience, and we won't be small and we will have more guys in the right roles. That is a long way off right now. Right now it's hard for the kids and for our fans. I really feel very badly for everyone that it has happened on my watch."
 
"We are no different than any other Division I team. We want to be in the NCAA Tournament. That's not going to happen this year. It's the best sporting event in our country short of the Super Bowl. We have kids who want to have the chance to play professionally, they have high goals. They are on campus 11 months a year and this means the world to them, so of course this is hurtful. Of course this is extremely difficult. It's a credit to them that they come back and you could see in the first half it was tied, they keep battling. I love these kids; they're becoming better people because of this. Very few people understand the desire, commitment, the year round training that an A-10, high level Division I basketball player goes through to give themselves a chance. Our guys worked their butts off this offseason. Whenever you work hard and don't get the outcome you want it stinks. What I told them after the game is I can't single anyone out; our problems are much bigger than any one person. It comes back to the team I put together; it's just not good enough on a consistent basis. Hopefully we will be against Davidson, and hopefully it will be good enough against St. Joes in a rivalry game. But obviously over a long period of time it's not what we need and that's my fault."