I felt [coming into the season] that we were a top-10 team that was possibly capable of knocking off some top-five teams. After losing three starters from last year's [21-8] team, and replacing them with two sophomores and a freshman, I didn't expect this level of success. |
I have to give them credit. They shot the heck out of the ball, especially early on. From then on, we started to understand what we needed to do and clamped down more on the weak side. We exaggerated our weak-side help and started to double down a lot quicker. |
I look at it as River Dell refusing to go away. We made some mistakes, but they took advantage. We might have been a little fatigued. We just had to try and withstand it and we did. |
I see her coming out of her shell. She has that big smile. It can go a long way. I think she's got something. It's not just her performance. |
If this game is anything like the first two, both of our benches will be completely worn out. We have a tremendous amount of respect for RBC and what Coach Montano has been able to accomplish there. Both times we played them, the game could have gone to RBC, but we made some big shots in big spots. |
It was a great game that could have gone either way and we were very fortunate to win. Manasquan is a great team that beat us at our place. The girls played their hearts out. |
My phone has been ringing, yes. When she performs like that, suddenly people are starting to come to us. |
Paige (Armstrong), Kate and Kara weren't used to guarding complete outside players, but once we started communicating better and getting up in Haddonfield's faces, we were boxing out and didn't let them get the ball back. |
Paige is a warrior inside. She plays so hard and gives us so much energy. The other thing she did today was help us handle the basketball. For the most part, Paige and Caitlin were the only junior and senior on the court and they showed great leadership. |
Reaching the Tournament of Champions is a pinnacle. It's what we always strive for. We're looking at this as we're not done. We have one more step to take and it's the biggest and hardest one. |
They've worked their butts off, but what I think the big thing is that they have been a close-knit unit from the start. |
We came in with a game plan, where we wanted to run early and set the tempo. Our offense had been sputtering our last few games, so we looked at films and saw that we'd been walking the ball up the floor. |