Feb. 2, 2008

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Memphis Head Coach John Calipari

"I love winning. It doesn't matter how. We can win with a half-court bank shot and I'm happy. I'm disappointed in some of our players who didn't play as well as I would have figured (they would), but we found a way to try to win that game."

"It's incredible. We can't make a free throw, we missed 20. We're one for 17 at the 3-point line. At the end of the game, we had five guys in the lane. They're throwing threes from a rafter and you still figure out how to win a game."

"A lot of how we played is because of Tony's preparation. He knows us, he knows how we play, and what we're trying to do. His guys played until the final buzzer. My hat's off (to them). They're the second-best team, in my opinion, in our league from what I've seen. They have size, athleticism, and they can score the ball. I'm just happy we won."

UTEP Head Coach Tony Barbee

"It was a great effort, but no moral victories here. We played well and expected to win. Memphis is a very good team. We had our opportunities, but we could not take advantage of them."

"Memphis is a great team on their homecourt. You cannot miss when you have opportunities, and we missed a lot of close buckets near the end. We wanted to do two things. They thrive on spurts, run outs, and on those 15-2 and 16-4 runs; and then they're up by 30 and the game is over. To combat that, we had to get back in transition. Memphis got no easy layups, and we had to handle their pressure, which I thought we did well tonight."