It's one of those things that happened and happened at a tough time. But we've got to deal with it. ... We've got to go without him on Wednesday and lift each other up. He would want us to go out there and play well.

Bruce Pearl has done a great job of getting those guys to buy into what he is doing. If we had responded with some intensity and aggressiveness early on, it would have been a much better basketball game. After we got into the flow of understanding how hard they play, we were just too far down.

I think we have the makings of a special team. But there are so many teams in our league that are better than we are, I believe, at this particular point that we've got a lot of work to do. But if we continue to work hard, this team could be an NCAA team, but we're so far from that right now.

We won three in a row, we lost three in a row and we can very easily win three in a row again. What we can't do is take steps back. Even though we didn't win, we made a step forward today.

We had a couple of times when our guys could have squeezed off shots when they chose not to. We've got to work our way out of this and gain our confidence back.

I'm not going to get crushed. I may bend, I may lean over, but I'm not going to fall.