Postgame Quotes
June 21, 1999 | Men's Basketball
Detroit Head Coach Perry Watson
"I thought it was a tremendous game. I am really proud of my guys. They really hung in there when we got down by nine points. Some things didn;t go our way in the first half. We got in some foul trouble that we had no substitute and we had to play the whole 20 minutes with Rashad Phillips, Bacari Alexander and Jermaine Jackson. The guys didn't complain about it - they just sucked it up and gave us a chance to win the game.""We had tremendous guard play. I think my guards are as good as any guards that have touched the floor no matter where we have played this year. Jermaine Jackson is a young man that is going to play at the next level. Rashad Phillips is a tremendously talented young man. We think that no matter who we play, we will not get outplayed at the guard spot. Maybe somebody will play us well, but we will never get out-played."
Detroit Players
Jermaine Jackson"In the second half, I smelled blood for whoever was guarding me. I had to go to my strength and that is driving to the basket.
"We didn;t feel like we had anything to prove. Rashad (Phillips) and I can play with any backcourt in the nation. I guess everybody in the nation has seen the results. We are not saying that we are better than anybody, but we know that we can play with anybody."
Bacari Alexander
On the significance of tonight's win:
"It is not only great for the University of Detroit-Mercy, but it is also great for any of the other so-called cinderalla schools out there. We go out and give everything we have to produce great results. Tonight was an example of that. I think our defense prevailed and we were able to keep them below their scoring average and keep their percentages low. That is our type of game and we came out victorious."
Rashad Phillips
"We set our goals high. At the beginning of the year, Jermaine (Jackson) and I told each other that every time we go out on the court, we will go after the backcourt. That is what we came out to do today with Baron Davis and Earl Watson."
UCLA Head Coach Steve Lavin
"Detroit played a tremendous game. Both teams really competed hard. Obviously, losing Baron Davis was a devastating blow. I thought Detroit did a tremendous job of hitting the shots when they needed them and knocking down their free throws. They got some key stops when they needed it. There were a couple of loose ball rebound situations where we didn't come up with it and a couple of rebounds they secured and we didn't. In terms of going into this game, we expected a kind of grind-it-out, hard-fought battle and that's what we got. It was two teams competing their fannies off and we came up short. It's hard not to be proud of our effort. Hopefully, they got resolve from the experience like this to be better for next year. We knew going into the game, Detroit was going to be as competitive of a team that we have faced. They played great defense. They're a sound team."
On which hurt more, losing to Priceton here in 1996 or to Detroit:
"There are two totally different kinds of experiences. This team is so young, so for us, this just needs to be a springboard for our future. This is really the first time this team has been together.
UCLA Players
JaRon Rush"We felt that we let ourselves down. We felt that we had the game won, up five coming out of a timeout and came out playing loose. Then after Baron (Davis) fouled out that really drained us emotionally because he's our floor leader, he's our general out there. Basically, be just came up short tonight.