Coach Donovan answers questions.
COACH BILLY DONOVAN: Well, just the main piece has been their willingness to remain extremely unselfish, their ability not to embrace success. I think that's the hardest thing that happens to a team is, when you get to be 17-0, you can think it's easy or that you got it all figured out. They really remained very humble. They wanted to get better.
I think the losses that we went through this year, I've said this many times, have helped our basketball team understand how to get beat. We were able to make corrections. I would say besides the passion, the unselfishness, playing hard, they're a very, very attentive group that care about each other a great deal, want to be coached, want information and want to get better.
I think that's the key. Although they're young in terms of their year in class, they're a little bit older mentally in terms of what they've got to zero in and focus in on. That's been a bit surprising to me because I didn't know what to expect. I felt like we'd play unselfish, we'd play hard, and they'd give me everything they had night in and night out. But I didn't know when the experience factor would kick in, would we be able to overcome that.
Al started but was pretty much a defender, rebounder for us. Corey was the same thing, perimeter defender, slasher. Corey was our leading scorer coming back from last year's name, scoring seven points a game. There was a lot of uncertainty. These guys have shown when you play together as a team what can be accomplished.
So you talk about UCLA's tradition. I'm hoping teams that continue to come up, this will be a reflection of what a group of guys, a collection of guys, can do together.