I don't like to compare players. But, without putting anybody down, I can honestly say Mike had the greatest range of any player I've ever coached. There were no bad shots for Mike.

The tragedy that happened at Lamar had a tremendous impact on us within the athletic department and at the university, as a whole. Like everything else, though, life must go on. I remember us coming together more at Lamar back then, and I'm sure it'll be the same at West Brook.

Texas-Arlington is a veteran team. All of their main players got in a lot of minutes last year.

Steve knows the tradition and has a genuine passion for Lamar basketball because he grew up with it. I believe he has a great future and will continue to take Lamar basketball to our expectation level of where the program should be on a yearly basis.

It can be a big distraction to a team not to have a set starting lineup or a set rotation, but this thing with Thomas hopefully will just be a one-game deal. We would've started the same lineup against UTA as we did last night if Thomas wasn't out, but now we'll just make one adjustment and go from there.

Jordan had a great game. He had 15 points at halftime, and he got 15 more in the second half. He was a big key to the game.

There are several teams that could step up and win it all. Northwestern was picked to win it, and they (the Demons) have been pretty impressive, but some other teams have been impressive, too.

Having five guys in double figures is the kind of balance I like to see. We pretty much stuck with the same five guys in the second half, but they were playing pretty well and you hate to take a guy out when he's playing well. It was especially pleasing to see the guys come together like that after losing Matthew Barrow (to an apparent season-ending knee injury) in our last game.

I enjoyed coaching at Lamar the past three years and appreciate the hard work the players put in to making the program better. This will allow me to get back to doing the job I came back to Lamar to do in the first place.

Ideally, everyone would like to have the same starting lineup for every game and be able to go with the same game plan for every game. Everyone would know their roles, and everyone would know the rotation.