All through the recruiting process his dad was involved, but he wanted to let his son make his own decision. He didn't want his son to come to St. John's because he felt pressure to come to New York. His son made his own decision and I think it worked out pretty good for him.

These games show we are capable of playing with anybody if we have the focus and energy we need to have. Now we have games coming against non-ranked teams that are still good basketball teams and we have to play with the same passion. If we do that, we will win our share of games.

Gray his huge. He's one of the biggest human beings I've ever seen. But he's done a great job getting his body in shape.

In the second half we played with energy, we played hard. We had to attack the basket and we did.

I'm really, really proud of the kids. We kept telling the guys about sticking together. We went through a hard road, playing four nationally ranked teams in a row and three of them on the road. I'm proud that we stuck together and understood we could get it done if we just stayed focused and did the things we knew we could do.

It was a family decision. I didn't feel there was any negativity. Cedric has to know he's been important to us.

It's Big East basketball. Big East basketball is that way. It's a physical game every time you play in the league.

It's probably odd. You shouldn't be able to play in a prestigious tournament if you are under .500. You take a conference like ours, to get to .500, it's unbelievable. With conference record, you could be under .500, but overall record, you should be over .500.

I told them we've got to have a defensive mindset. We're not good in high-scoring games. I thought we did some really good things in this game but we just didn't play well in the last four minutes.

I told them in the locker room that it does hurt, but that means we're playing games that mean something.