Dec. 21, 2002

Missouri head coach Quin Snyder

On the game: "We're better than we played. We played a very good team. It's hard to call it a great team this early in the year, but I thought Illinois just played great basketball tonight."

On Missouri's play: "We got the ball inside a couple of times. ... AJ was pressing. There were a couple of times when we were down 9, and those are the times you have to grind it out, and that's where out team needs to improve."

On Missouri's play just before halftime: I thought we didn't execute before the half. That's a crucial time in the game. We went in down 7. Rickey and AJ were in foul trouble, our two leading scorers. We came out in the second half and didn't correct a lot of those things. We kept getting beat to loose balls; we kept getting them second shots."

On the play of Illinois guard Dee Brown: "Dee Brown is a terrific player. He made some big shots during the game. I thought we were defending really well for the first 10 minutes of the game. There was a point there where they hit three 3-pointers all in a row, all off second shots. We were stopping them, but they were quicker to the ball, and Dee Brown had a couple of them. We wanted to take away their 3's. ... Illinois is a really good team, and they did some things that pulled us apart a big, and we have to work on that."

On the play of junior center Arthur Johnson: "We didn't react well to being down. ... We had guys that wanted to do it, and no one guy can. You need each other, and we haven't been in that situation, and we didn't respond well to it. ... That's something our kids have to learn."