I give Mt. Ararat a lot of credit. They came in and took us out of our game. They made it difficult for us. |
I knew it wouldn't be easy. Coach (Aaron) Watson has his kids playing hard; they have no quit in them. This is a difficult place to play, but I was pleased. |
I think it's careful planning and a lot of passion for what we do. It really is a client-focused business. |
That's something we've worked on extensively in the past couple of days. |
The last four years we've gone to Bangor, and every time we'd pass Augusta I'd think to myself, another hour and fifteen minutes to go. Purists wanted to keep (the tournament) in Bangor, but it was time. |
There isn't any time for us to hang our heads. |
They came out and they played a great game. They did what they had to do. |
They've carried that experience over and they've been really good leaders. It's huge in a new environment like this and a tournament setting. I think it really paid dividends. |
We have been waiting to get back to the regional finals for three years. Jordan Cook (6-10 Hampden Academy center) is a game changer and changes teams with his defense and is pretty smooth offensively as well. |
We tried to run a spread offense and our guys interpreted it as more of we didn't want to shoot, which wasn't the case. We had that last timeout and we told the kids to do what they do. They started attacking and our seniors stepped up and it worked out. |
We tried to take Cook away, and Silver stepped in and really filled the void and made us change what we were doing. We had to almost man-up Jordan, and when you man up someone who is 6-10 and a Mr. Basketball finalist, he's going to score 26 points, which is what he did. |
Whatever we tried to do defensively, they had a counter. We allowed them to penetrate and once they did, good things happened for them and bad things happened for us. Hampden punished us on the boards. |