The first thing you do is try to keep your team in condition. You can't afford with two weeks off to suffer from a conditioning aspect. The second thing is that you want to stay sharp in your execution and sharp mentally, particularly in the week leading up to the tournament.

I'm very happy for Alexis because it was a definite goal of hers. She's worked very hard and played well and deserves an opportunity at the next level.

I hadn't thought of that. I guess the only reaction I have to that is I wish it was one less (today), and he was at home in the bed with the flu.

I have no problems with that. That is something that I've felt would occur over a period of time as more players who played at the highest level and went through the entire process (began entering the candidate pool).

I know the final score, the margin up there, was probably 16 or 18, but it was a closer basketball game than that. They played us very well at their place a year ago. They were young. They have those players back.

At times, it was the game we feared and, at times, it was the game we hoped for. They're very good inside and very good off the dribble and in the first half they got too much of both of those. But we settled down in the second half.

The NCAA is a simple ordeal. Not easy, but simple. If you can win two straight games three times, you are the national champions. You want to get to the Final Four; you want to win the national championship. That is the motivation that is spoken, but the process is to win this game.

They defend very, very well. I was impressed with the way they defended us.

Connecticut has improved a great deal since the beginning of the year in that area. They've improved in a lot of areas, but their schemes are such offensively that they're not at a nature where you take a lot of risk with the basketball. So it's going to be hard to turn them over.

It's been an adjustment because we're a basketball program and a staff that prides itself on working hard. But these numbers have changed the amount of work that we do and the way in which we go about doing it. Now that said, it hasn't affected the way that we play. And I credit the kids for that. We still have the ability that when it's time to pick it up, we can go hard and we can go for the duration.