Tommy Dempsey on the state of his team heading into tonight's game:

"I don't think we've really hit our stride yet.

"We played well opening night, we played pretty well against Saint Joe's, but I don't think we've really hit our stride yet. You look aroudn and see what everyone else's record is, and I think we've probably played tougher competition than anyone else, so you can feel good about that, but I think you have to be cautious. I talk to my team about being cautious about ourselves because we haven't played that well.

"I take the approach with them that win or lose, we evaluate on performance. Yes, I know people say the bottom line is to win, but it's not always the bottom line. If you get into February and you're in a dog right near the top of the league, it's different. But right now I think how you're playing is just as important as winning or losing.

"We're not playing for an at-large berth, so I just want to be playing better. If we play great (tonight) in a loss, I could live with that. If we play poorly in a win, I guess I could live with that because the win would be important to us against a Big Five team that I really think has a chance to win the Atlantic 10 based on what I've seen on film, but we won't be able to play poorly and win. If we win it'll be a great win, but at the same time, I want to play well. Regardless of the outcome (tonight) or Saturday (at UMBC) or at Rutgers, once we get to Siena (Dec. 23), I want to win.

"Right now, it's about playing better, because we haven't really played very many good games. I don't really feel good about the way we've played, so it's more of a big game from an evaluation standpoint than from a win-loss standpoint."