The last three or four games Scotty has been absolutely phenomenal. His play has really elevated our team over the past couple of weeks.

It seems like yesterday that he was starting his first game as a freshman. If memory serves me correct, the first time he played he had 10 points, 10 assists and no turnovers, so I kind of knew after that night we had something special.

They get their points in bunches and they get a lot of them off turnovers. Our kids have worked hard for this game.

Right now we're in a battle. Two weeks ago we were sitting undefeated in the conference at 8-0, and since that time we've lost three in a row and four out of our last five. Right now we're sitting in a battle for second place at 9-4. Every game from now on is a playoff game ? we need to battle for position.

There's no quit in that team. I didn't expect it to get to 53-52, but I expected them to come back.

We challenged Rene a couple weeks ago to step up and be the player he was in the middle of the season, and over the course of the last two weeks he's responded. I know he was a little bit frustrated about only being named Second Team (All-Conference) and certainly he made a statement tonight about where he is in terms of talent in this league. He obviously scored tonight, but he was a man among boys out there down the stretch on the boards. And that was the key reason why we were successful.

We need to start playing with a little bit more consistency and get the execution that we need to get back to where we were. We're a different team than we were two weeks ago and we need to find out what we need to do to get back to the winning ways.

When you look at the statistics and we're 11-for-23 from the free-throw line and in the second half we shoot 26 percent, we certainly don't deserve to win.

We called timeout and asked the kids to try not to foul. But (the Blazers) are very quick and continued to attack the rim and we continued to foul. Tonight someone was looking over us in the sense that they didn't make their free throws.

We're certainly looking forward to the game. We're just happy to be here and representing Norwich in a topnotch way.