March 8, 2007

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Head Coach Brian Gregory
"I though there was about a six minute stretch in the first half where we lost a little bit of our concentration, but not our effort and because of that I thought that was the main difference in the first half and that was, you know, a six point deficit, and unfortunately in the second half there was probably the same amount of stretch where we lost a little bit of the concentration and didn't maybe play with the effort that we had been playing with, for whatever reason, and when you do that against a team of Xavier's caliber, when you combine them both, the effort and the concentration, instead of six now all of a sudden its 12, and now at this point the lead is now 18 points and that's kind of what happens."

"I feel that Brian (Roberts) in particular, can't ask for more that what he gave us today, as well as a couple other guys. Where were at with some of the injuries and so forth, we need everybody to play extremely well, and we didn't have that. We've done some good things, it's probably the first time in three or four weeks we didn't have that same concentration and effort and against a good team like that, the score reflects that."

"I would love to get to coach these guys another couple weeks (On making the NIT Tournament). We get Marcus (Johnson) back and get back on track with that. In the last four weeks, other than maybe these eight or nine minutes this afternoon, we've done a lot of good things."

Brian Roberts
"Well with the last three weeks of the season, I thought we were playing pretty good ball. We had some good momentum coming into the tournament. The young freshmen like London (Warren) and Marcus (Johnson) and Kurt (Huelsman), they've developed this year. They've been playing a lot better than what they came in as incoming freshman. It's a lot of positives that we can take from the last few weeks of the season."

"We knew we had to play a very good game, with the adversity we've been facing the past month or so. We knew the type of team Xavier was and how good of a team they are. We knew coming in we had to play a real good game with no lulls. We had some minor lulls in the game and they took every advantage of them, and that was the difference."

Xavier Head Coach Sean Miller
"Today was a difficult game for us. Anytime you play a team as well coached as Dayton is, a school that is so close to ours and a team we have just played and already played twice this season and beat twice we knew today was going to be very hard. We respect them a great deal and hope their season can continue and would like to think with 19 wins beating Louisville, Holy Cross, Creighton and playing the way they play I would like to think that they have an opportunity to keep playing in the NIT and hopefully they can advance. They have a young team and will represent our conference well."

"We have characteristics that favor a team in March. Number one we have a great point guard who controlled the game and really has for the last month. Keep in mind for this group of seniors this was their 16th post season game. They played eight as freshmen and they had big rolls on that team, two more as sophomores, five last year and then one today. We have a lot of experience and I think [Justin] Doellman's game reflected that today."

"At this time of year you're led by your veteran players and we're no different than any other team and have our seniors leading us and playing well and the combination of them and Lavender at the point has really allowed us to play at a high level for some time."

"We don't talk about the NCAA tournament, if we had started talking about that when it was first said we would go in we would have gone stir crazy by now. It's a matter of us knowing that we have to do the best we can with where we're at. We know tomorrow is going to be difficult no matter who we face, it always is in the tournament and at the end of the day I would like to think that with how we have played for such a long time that we can move into the NCAA tournament."

Justin Doellman
"Our defense set the tone and allowed us to get some easy transition buckets which helped us jump off a trampoline on the offensive end in the end of the first half."

"Drew (Lavender) is a great point guard and playing with him so long and in the off season you just know he is going to find the open person. If you're open he will get you the ball."

Drew Lavender
"We knew it would be real hard to beat a team three times and that Dayton was going to bring it and they did especially in the first half, but the second half we stepped it up on defense and were able to pull away."