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tion.
"Those guys," he said, "needed some time to figure
some things out."
Once they did, the pieces fell into place.
"It's been a learning process," Kaminsky said.
"In all of our losses, we saw things that we needed
to clean up and fix and we've done that. It has re-
ally shown in the tournament that we've taken the
coaching and the learning we've had throughout the
season and we've really put it into action."
After sensing the stars were aligned, UW assistant
coach Lamont Paris said, "At the start of the tourna-
ment, I told everyone that would listen to me that
we had enough. Now would we play well enough?
Would we catch a team that was really hot? Would
we have a day when we were cold?"
Paris had to wait for those answers. "But I knew
we had enough to get there," he said of the Final
Four, "and to win it." Paris is not prone to hyperbole.
Neither is Gard, who reasoned, "We're not here
without any piece of the puzzle, whether it's the five
players starting or the three coming off the bench."
But he agreed with Paris.
"I thought this group had it," Gard said. "If we could
do some things defensively, I thought we were going
to really have a chance (to get to the Final Four)."
Still, there was still a process to follow, even in the
post-season.
"I thought we were our most nervous before that
American game," said Gard. "I thought we were very
confident in our warm-up against Baylor. I thought
we were confident against Arizona. We started to de-
velop a little bit of that swagger about us. Our league
really toughened us for this run."
Ryan was tough on them, too. He even said as much
last weekend in Anaheim. "I was a lot tougher on this
"We've been through a lot, a lot
of ups and downs," Gasser said.
"Everything that has happened
this entire year has helped us out."
