“I think just like anything, when you are on defense it is a will and a want. You don’t have to be the most skilled person. You don’t have to be if you really want to defend. And you try to get stops collectively, and you instill them to your organization, it kind of energizes the person next to you. If I see him playing that hard, and I see him playing that hard, it kind of festers, and that’s something that we hope to continue to build on. We hang our hat on our toughness and our defense, because the ball is not always going to go in and again, little by little, the ball starts going in from three. But again, our identity is not on the offensive end. We hang our hat on trying to be physical, connected, and willing to try to defend.” – Cooley on the team’s identity
“We asked them to keep their heads up and keep them locked into the game, just knowing that we got their back. We asked them to play physical defense, and sometimes, sometimes a little bit too physical, and they get called for the foul, so we got to just do a better job of playing defense without fouling. But we let them know that they were playing good defense, and we got their back.” – Malik Mack
“It was an energizer. I think [Isaiah Abraham] didn’t realize how impactful that play was. You know, outside defense helping your brother out, and it gave everybody on the court and through the whole building energy. And I think we needed that for that little run we went on after that with this group.” – KJ Lewis on Isaiah Abraham’s pivotal block in the second half