Minnesota Q

The view from the Minnesota locker room:

FROM 270-POUND COURTNEY JAMES

Q: How tough was UCLA?

A: Given my choice, I’d want to play them before Clemson. I thought UCLA was a little soft.

*

FROM JUNIOR SAM JACOBSON

Q: Describe the Bruins. What kind of team were they?

A: They seem to play a lot on emotion. They were chirping a lot early in the game. Then, when things didn’t go their way, they stopped chirping.

*

FROM 275-POUND JOHN THOMAS

Q: What’s your assessment of the Bruins?

A: They are a team that wanted to run and fly and dunk a lot. But when things got a lot closer, and tighter later, their heads seemed to go down.

*

FROM COACH CLEM HASKINS

Q: What’s your take on UCLA?

A: We ran into [Charles] O’Bannon and [Cameron] Dollar in the hallway. They wished us luck next week and we wished them luck in life. All of these guys are a class bunch.

*

FROM POINT GUARD ERIC HARRIS

Q: Your injured shoulder was a big story going into the game, yet you started and played 23 minutes. How are you now?

A: It still hurts. The first half, it was fine. But it stiffened up in the second-half warmups and I couldn’t do much statistically tonight. But I felt they needed me, and so I sucked it up.

*

FROM JACOBSON

Q: What was Minnesota’s bottom-line strategy?

A: Punch the ball down low. We were bigger and stronger, and we knew it.