Feb. 28, 2007
New Mexico Head Coach Ritchie McKay
“I thought our guys did a good job of battling again. We’ve had this song sang a couple of different times in the last two weeks. We got a little bit out of synch when we didn’t get a call or two and then I got a [technical]. The game kind of got away from us, but our guys did a great job of fighting hard and playing with great energy. Aaron (Johnson) and J.R. (Giddens) were tremendous tonight and I was really proud of our guys’ effort.”
(on Darren Prentice’s final free throw): “We tried to miss it and tip it back. We got a decent look.”
(on J.R. Giddens’ performances): “J.R. played great. We saw a little bit tonight what we saw at the beginning of the year. Hopefully he gets his confidence back before the Mountain West Conference tournament.”
UNLV Head Coach Lon Kruger
“Really good game. [New Mexico] got out of the gates on us, obviously, and I thought got us on our heels a little bit. Then they made shots, then I thought we got a pretty good rhythm defensively in the latter stage of the first half. We had a good stretch in the second half, then we just couldn’t guard them in the second half. Giddens got hot and other guys made key shots. We needed more stops.”
(on the final 13 seconds of the game): “We didn’t want to let them take anything. More than anything (we wanted) to run some time down like they did, then we were going to foul before they got the three up. The guys executed all of that pretty well. We just didn’t get the rebound.”