I'm a great defensive player ? I'm just underrated. I think I can play defense on any good guard. If coach gives me any guard to lock up, I think I can do the job.

If he responds, great. If he doesn't, those minutes are going to be hard to get. We can't play defense without urgency and tough-mindedness.

I don't think there's anybody not wanting to [play defense], but maybe, subconsciously , we haven't been completely focused. Tonight we kind of got caught up with the officials a little bit; we weren't completely focused in the second half.

The difference is we have players who play good defense. This team definitely does that. But we do have seven sophomores, so this is going to be a new experience for a lot of kids.

I don't think anybody is scared of our half-court defense. When you get ready to play Tennessee, you can say lots of different things about how they might beat you, but our half-court defense isn't one of them.

We couldn't take care of the ball and we didn't play very good defense at all. We didn't get a hand in their face. We let them shoot the wide-open shot from the outside and they were falling.