Rick Pitino and Earl Clark on Rutgers

Rick Pitino

--“I watched the Rutgers-Pittsburgh game and Rutgers was leading wire to wire until 4-something to go in the game and they totally had Pitt’s number in the game. Then Pitt hit two straight three’s and overpowered them in the last few minutes of the game. We all know how good Pitt is.”

--“Rutgers is a very young and talented team. This is no longer a rebuilding team – this is a very talented team. They have four starters back and two guys off the bench back. Plus they’ve got a terrific (freshman) who is from the same high school Samardo is from.”

--“We know we’ve got 14 more wars to go and we never say trap game. Our guys are very tuned in. We could lose (tonight) but it won’t be because it’s a trap game. We never treat one game more special than another. We played them twice last year and our guys know how tough they are. It was a very close game at Rutgers.”

--“I think Edgar Sosa and Earl Clark have made significant progress from the non-conference schedule until now. All Earl Clark has to do is play hard and it’s obvious how valuable he is to our basketball team. And I asked Edgar to improve defensively and he has.”

--“We make mistakes like every team does but we’re playing extremely hard. We’re not doing everything that we want to do but we’re not too far away from that. We have so much room for growth. Offensively we are nowhere near out potential. We still haven’t put a game together where five or six guys have great offensive nights.”

--"We're after something a lot bigger than a ranking. Last year we were one game out of winning the Big East. It came down to the last game of the season for us. We're hoping we're at the same point at the end of this year."

--“We’re doing it with our defense. We’re doing it with an improved rebounding mentality. But we are still not getting multiple guys having great offensive nights.”

Earl Clark

--"If we go out and lose to Rutgers, everything we did this past week is going to be erased. We're definitely going to come out hard and with intensity."

--"We got all these great players and all this potential, why (are) things going on. But we had to just stay with it, stay strong and as time goes on I think we just get better. We have better chemistry. The young guys, they're coming around the corner and that's all we needed, was time."