"He hit it pretty hard, " Girardi said.

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So, it hit him hard when he realized that these villages are doomed.

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He said the country might find it hard to hit its trade growth target of 10 percent for the year.

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He was the model for how to prepare for an interview and how to conduct it on air: He knew when to hit hard and when to probe gently.

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It hit me really hard because I thought he had beaten throat cancer and had no idea that he was this ill.

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Backcourt leadership remains a mystery fans are swooning for rookie Iman Shumpert (18 points in second game) but it's hard to imagine he won't hit a wall as last year's rookie pet, Landry Fields, did (Shumpert left in the fourth quarter Wednesday with leg cramps).

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The dip in results since he left may be complete coincidence, but it is clear plenty of the players were hit hard by what happened, and how it happened so suddenly.

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Horn said he'd be a hard worker and then, to prove his intensity, hit the wall so hard it left a dent.

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"It didn't seem that hard a shot - in the first fight he seemed to hit me 10 times harder, " he said.

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He did a great job of holding it up, playing me, so I tried to hit it low and hard at the far post.

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