Larry Brown on UConn: "They're good ... I think they're deep and talented."

Larry Brown's postgame presser was worth the price of admission alone. Respectful of his opponent, respectful of the NCAA tournament selection process (even with a few sardonic jabs), respectful of reporters. A class act.

Here's some of what he said:

(on why Yanick Moreira, who dominated with 12 points inside in the first half, played so little down the stretch)

“We were trying to catch up, and I had a hard time playing Markus (Kennedy) on (Daniel) Hamilton. And Markus was going pretty good in the second half. They went small, that made it difficult.”

“We had a dunk go out of bounds, and it seemed like things turned. Yanick did do a lot of good things. I’ve got four good big guys, and I think it’s a little easier for Ben Moore or Cannen (Cunningham) to guard on the perimeter. I kind of like Markus on the post, he got 18. That’s something that you look back on and maybe I did the wrong thing.”

(on whether UConn is worthy of an at-large tourney bid)

“I don’t know if anybody knows what conference we’re in. I don’t even know what the criteria is, to be honest with you. I never said anything last year, about us not going in, because I didn’t want to be not appreciative of some other team that got in. But when I saw Louisville had a four-seed, Connecticut, Cincinnati, Memphis getting seven and eight seeds, I knew we didn’t have a chance. Then I looked, we were 4-6 against top-20 teams. I don’t know what a BPI or an RPI, or who the hell does that stuff. We beat Wyoming with (Larry) Nance, and they beat San Diego State. We beat them at Wyoming. Then he gets hurt, so Wyoming goes down. We lost Yanick last year for a good portion of the second half ... I just hope we have somebody in the room that realizes there are some quality teams in this conference. This is a quality win for Connecticut. I don’t know how they’ll look at it. They might just think we’re just SMU like SMU was years ago.”

“They’re good. You got Boatright, you got a shot blocker, you’ve got a freshman who’s as good as any freshman around. If (Rodney) Purvis,  (Omar) Calhoun can play, their bigs can come in and take fouls. I think they’re deep and talented, and they’ve got a great young coach who does things the right way.”