36 Quotes by Brian Thornton

It felt good to be here with the guys tonight. They played their hearts out tonight. It felt good that they all put on the long socks for me, as a little tribute. I'm still part of this team, and I'll be doing everything I can to prepare them and support them as the season goes on.

It felt good to be here with the guys. They played their hearts out tonight. It felt good they put on the long socks for me as a tribute or whatever. Whatever it takes to win, I'm glad I could come back and support them.

We realize we beat them twice last year. But at the same time it's a different team for us and for them. GW is one of the best teams in the nation right now, and they're playing like it.

We had kind of gotten away from the basketball we had been playing in the past, and a couple 6 a.m. practices refocused us and got us ready. When you have these (school) assignments, you can't get to bed early. But it was worth it. If that's what we need to do to work and get better, that's what we have to do.

We wanted to go out and focus on rebounding. It's been our Achilles' heel so far this season. This was a trap game for us, where if we didn't go out and rebound the ball well, we could be in a world of trouble. They still rebounded the ball well, but collectively, we kept them off when it came crunch time.

We can be hopeful that we have a game on Wednesday so that we can go out and play again. We have eight more games to go. We don't want to go out like this.

Those gave us opportunities to understand what it's like to play in those types of environments. . . . A lot of games throughout the course of the conference season . . . are going to come down to the final four minutes of the game. Having the ability to finish and close the deal is going to be very important to our ability to be successful in the conference season.

To some extent, granted they weren't in the A-10, but they had earned an opportunity to be ranked that high after making the NCAA Tournament the last few years. Nobody in the A-10 had done that. They put themselves in position to be looked at that way.

We kind of have the Cincinnati game hanging over us for part of the New Year. Now we can focus on competing and trying to win a conference championship.