University of Connecticut Athletics
Connecticut 73, West Virginia 62
2/22/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 22, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery 
| AP Photo Gallery
Connecticut Head Coach Jim Calhoun
"It's nice to be able to say it three games in a row, that I'm proud of the kids' effort. On the board we had that this was going to turn into a fight, a fistfight, and the last man standing is going to have a chance to win the game. And if you get killed on the backboards, which happened to us nine, 10 games ago against Cincinnati, but you turned that around against Rutgers and you certainly turned that around against Villanova... And we turned that around tonight, on a team that really, really can rebound, we did a great job."
"We played a gutty game. It's not the prettiest game you're ever going to see...In our league, if you don't get involved in this kind of game, you can't win. You gotta get your nose dirty. You gotta get in there... For those that know me a little bit, know that I don't mind my teams getting their nose dirty. And I thought we did for the third straight game."
"We've got a couple of pretty good, significant wins right now, and none of it means anything except that we have Louisville next Sunday....I have no misgivings about what we didn't do. All I care about is what we're doing right now."
"There's no look-back in life. There are no mulligans. I just happy with what we're doing now, and we still have a lot more work to do."
"You can't let this opportunity go by without everything you possibly have. And if you come off, not fully exhausted, not banged up a little bit - Jerome [Dyson] has about five ice things all over his body..."
"That was an incredibly physical game, as most BIG EAST games are, but we stuck in the fight, and made some big plays, and were able to win the game."
"I've said this all along: I like these kids, always have, and it was breaking my heart that we weren't winning those close games. And now we seem to be able to take control of games a little better."
"For good or for bad, if you come through this league, you're probably pretty strong physically and mentally, because you're going to be tested every single night."
On Dyson
"Butler is one of the better players in the country, and I thought he was just special on him."
Kemba Walker
On Stanley's put-back and then your steal at the end
"Stanley's put-back basically sealed the game for us. And then he came down and played good defense on Ebanks. He pressured him so much he got me a steal.
On how important the wins against Villanova and West Virginia are to the team
"We came out with a W against two top 10 teams. It was good for us. It was great for us, to tell you the truth."
Gavin Edwards
"We know we have our backs against the wall and would have to win out to have any post-season aspirations. So, we've definitely been playing like every game is our last one and it's been paying off for us."
How would you rate the team's confidence now?
"As of tonight, I think it's definitely at an all-time high."
What has changed over the last few games?
"Everyone wants to play in the tournament. And we knew to do that we would pretty much have to win the rest of our games, so everyone got focused and got the mentality that we have to go out and play hard every game."
On Coach Calhoun's technical in the first half
"It definitely sparked us."
Stanley Robinson
On his put-back dunk
"I was just trying to crash the boards the whole game. It was a blessing for me to get that offensive rebound."
"It was a fight. It was a big fight."
"No matter how many games we lost, we still have to come out and fight. We know we're a great team. We know we're capable of beating any team in the country, but we have to take it one day at a time."
West Virginia Head Coach Bob Huggins
"[UConn] is shooting the ball. We're not shooting the ball. Every good team goes through that. We're just not making any shots."
"It wasn't like we didn't have shots. We had shots."
"They made shots. We went under the screens and Kemba [Walker] stepped back and made shots. We tried to get over the screen and switch. They're shooting the ball."
