Virginia Head Coach Tony Bennett

On Braxton Key’s performance
I think Braxton’s kind of an opportunistic scorer and he’s complete and does a little bit of everything, so, you know, knock down a couple of threes and he’s an aggressive rebounder. Had a couple of good finishes, I thought he gave us a good lift and to have three guys in double figures, Mamadi [Diakite] with eight, and Ty [Jerome] with seven, Kihei [Clark] with seven, that balance is good for us.

On Jack Salt

Jack is back, yes he is. He had two good practices where it (the back injury) didn’t bother him, and I thought he played hard, and when he dove on the floor to keep a ball alive, I did say ok Jack is back to himself and he’s always going to play all out and physical.

On De’Andre Hunter

I thought De’Andre was really good. I thought defensively he did a really good job first. He spread out and bothered those guards, who are quick, and I think Antonio Green who gets a lot of shots up, you could see that, I thought that he was in a stance, he was ready, and De’Andre showed his completeness, whether it was on the glass, knocking down some threes, some drives, some post-ups, drawing and kicking. We were a little loose with the ball, obviously 13 turnovers, and their 1-3-1 was good, and you don’t see a lot of that. We worked just a couple of days against it and got better as it went on but I thought De’Andre’s completeness showed offensively and defensively.

Sophomore Guard De’Andre Hunter

On his performance tonight
We really spaced the floor on the 1-3-1 press and I was just looking for my shot when the guys kicked it to me to the corner. I was usually open and when they attacked at me I kicked it to guys that were open so it was just a spaced out game and it was easy for me.

Middle Tennessee Head Coach Nick McDevitt

Opening Statement

First of all, just like to congratulate Coach Bennett and his basketball team. There’s not a program or a coach that I respect more than their team and coach and what they do. They’re first class in every way. Tonight, playing a team as good as Virginia, we just didn’t execute enough on both sides of the ball to win a game like that. I told our team I thought our effort was good enough to win. We just didn’t execute enough on both sides of the ball. Had some careless offensive plays toward the end of the first half that I felt had we got a couple more baskets it could have been a five- or six-point game at the half as opposed to 13. Two or three mistakes on both sides of the ball where I thought we were making a run and could have had it a little bit tighter there at halftime, but was really proud of our team. You know you get down 9-0 to a top five team in the country, there’s a lot of folks that pitched in, but we get beat bad. So I liked what our guys did, and have to put it behind us tomorrow and play a tough team in Butler.

On his team’s effort and response in handling Virginia

We talk about toughness and effort daily in practice, shootarounds, games. You have to show a lot of toughness and effort, you’re down 20 to a team that’s capable of winning the national championship with 10 minutes to go in the first half, it could get ugly, and having as many young players as we do, watching Jayce Johnson and Anthony Crump, and Junior Farquhar, three true freshman guards out there, guard some high-level perimeter players for Virginia. You just can’t replicate that kind of experience that they got out there tonight, in practice. So, I saw, you could watch our team growing up right in front of our eyes and hopefully we can continue to do that.