Post Game Quotes

Belmont Head Coach Rick Byrd
“It's tough to come that close and not win. I'm so proud of our team and our players; I wouldn't feel any better or be any prouder of them if the score would have been in our favor. We played hard enough and well enough to win. I feel badly that the final sequences transpired as they did. We had a set play with four seconds to go, and Alex (Renfroe) did as he was instructed. It's a play we practice and have scored on this season. It's an anticipation play and if you wait, it won't be there. I should have drawn up a play for a layup, and if it wasn't there, I should have called timeout. I take responsibility for that. Our players did Belmont University proud. The one-point loss is unfair in a way because it doesn’t measure the effort our kids put out – the mental toughness of it.”

Junior Alex Renfroe
“It's heartbreaking. I'm not gonna lie, it's heartbreaking. We felt like we had a chance coming into this game. We played well this season and played well together. People asked about what we thought coming into this game, and it's about confidence. It is more than just on the court, it's with your teammates off the court, in the hotel room hanging out, off-season training. We had a mentality this season to get this done, and we played well tonight. Sometimes in basketball it just doesn't go your way, and the end didn't go our way.”

Senior Justin Hare
“We’ll be remembered as the team that almost did it. It’s hard to go out that way. We beat Cincinnati and Alabama this year, and played a great Xavier team, but playing Duke tonight, the way we did, probably our best game of the year. The final shot, yeah, it looked like it had a chance. Obviously, when you’re that far away, it’s not the shot you want, but it was the best shot we could get. We just tried to play our game tonight and stayed poised. We did that and gave ourselves a chance to win. But it hurts.”

Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
“We played against a team that played an amazing game. They’re a very good team. We were ready to play. You won’t hear any of our players say that we overlooked them. There’s no way. Watching them on tape, they looked very good. Watching them in person, they looked even better.”