MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – WVU men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins quotes from today’s teleconference.

On having players sick
We are fine. I think, fortunately, it didn’t spread to the other guys.

On the play-in game and how to prepare
Nothing is that simple. At the end of the day, everyone is going to ball screen. We have worked on doing a better job on guarding ball screens. Everyone runs the same stuff. It is just a matter of how you get into it. We have to get to the basics and then we will worry about how they get into their screens.

On winning a championship
It means a great deal to me, particularly being here. I would like nothing more than to win a national championship for the people here in the state of West Virginia. That would be awesome.

You learn that all you can do is give the best (effort) you can. There are a lot of things that happen that are out of your control. I have to worry about the things that I can control. I don’t worry about that other stuff.

On the defense and playing better in the tournament
We have to do a better job of taking care of the ball. Joe (Mazzulla) has had 11 turnovers in the last two games. We can’t win with that happening. When we were playing good and beating quality teams, we were taking care of the ball and because of that we didn’t give up a lot of huge baskets.

If you go back to our last game, they really had a hard time scoring against us, but we just threw them the ball.

On last year’s team compared to this year’s team
Our margin of error is not what it was a year ago. A year ago we scored 14 points in the first half against Villanova and had enough firepower (to win). I’m not sure we could do that. We have to do a whole lot more things right.

I told the team a year ago that when you get open shots, you need to make them because you are not going to get a whole lot. As you advance in the tournament, you are playing against better and better players and better teams. They have had time to scout you.

I think last year what no one could simulate and what really helped us was that we shocked people with our length. That was a great advantage.

I told them team today that there is no reason why we can’t go win. When you think about some of the people we have beaten and some of the players that we have played against, were are not going to play anyone better than Kemba Walker. We are not going to play against guards that are better than Ben Hansbrough. We may see some that are just as good, but we aren’t going to see anyone better.

We have to do a better job of being more efficient on offense. It doesn’t matter what offense you run or against what coach; if you have open shots and the players don’t make them, it’s not a good offense.

On Casey Mitchell
I think Casey needs to play well for us to play well, and he has. He has had two of his best days of practice these past two days than he has all season. I thought he was very good today.