Allan Ray
Allan Ray
Allan Rayis an American professional basketball player who currently plays for Virtus Bologna of the Lega Basket Serie A. He played college basketball for four years at Villanova University. He played one seasonwith the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association. Ray is known as an above average, but streaky, three-point shooter, who is skilled at creating his own shot. At 6'3" and 205 pounds, he is an average-sized guard...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAthlete
Date of Birth17 June 1984
CountryUnited States of America
We knew about Monmouth, we knew they were a very good team. We definitely didn't underestimate them.
We knew we never should have been in that position last year anyway for the game to be decided on that call.
Monmouth is a great defensive team or they wouldn't be here. This is the NCAA Tournament and there are a lot of great teams here. We kept our composure. We knew there were times when we weren't going to be able to score, but that's when we relied on our defense to keep us in the game.
We didn't sit back and start thinking we were going to lose. We talked in the huddle, and everybody said that we just had to stay calm and not panic. We knew they would make a run. Once you panic, bad things happen.
Once my vision came back and was clear and not blurry anymore, I knew I could come out and play.
Definitely, we all talked about it. We knew how they came in here and beat us pretty heavily last year. We didn't want to let that happen again, so we just came out with a great mindset, great intensity and really focused on our game plan.
We're never worried about off nights because we've got guys who can fill it up.
We're trying not to get caught up in the rivalry.
We just weren't being as aggressive on defense and we normally are. We needed to turn it up in the second half.
With all the media attention and all that's going on, I don't want all the focus to be on me. I just want to say my eye's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, so please no more questions about it. I just want to focus on basketball.
We just feed off each other. Sometimes Randy gets it going and everyone on the team knows that and we'll try to find him. Sometimes Mike (Nardi) gets it going and we find him. Sometimes I get it going and everyone finds me.
We hit a lot of shots early and once you hit shots early, you get a lot of confidence as a team.
Every shot was contested, you know? There were very few open looks. Florida did a great job of contesting our shots and made sure that we took tough shots.
When we jumped out on them early, we were all saying in our heads, 'We've got them exactly where we wanted them to be.' ... That was the best position you could have the No. 1 team in the country: 21-9 in the first half. We couldn't ask for anything more.