The last nine minutes of the game seemed like 20 days. Holding onto a lead like that and then knowing it's over - it means a lot. I jumped on the ball, kind of as a sigh of relief.

Their big men are very active shot-blockers who tend to leave their feet, and we used that against them. We went right at that zone inside to control the game.

I really want to beat Syracuse. We've never beaten them before, and that would top everything off completely and make us feel good about our last home game.

The last 9 minutes of the game seemed like 20 days. Holding onto a lead like that and then knowing it's over ? it means a lot. ... We haven't gotten the big wins throughout our whole careers here, but today things fell our way.

We feel like we kind of gave one away there. So, yeah, we'll be kind of hyped to see them.

We were pretty happy about it. We knew things were going to change and head in the right direction.

We've come so close plenty of times. This one is definitely the greatest feeling.

That was a good crowd. We're used to crowds like that in the Big East. But it was a good crowd, and they definitely made their feelings known.

I was in awe. Coach pretty much ripped us at halftime, tearing into us, and we took it to heart. This is the start of Big East season, and you don't want to start 0-1.

I got a couple big offensive rebounds down the stretch that we kind of converted on. So plays like that, a couple tips here and there on defense, things like that ... Coach has been preaching to the team about.