After Plano went up on us 5-2 we got hot and started hitting on all cylinders defensively and offensively. Of course Garrett was hot, and any time he is hot he hits a ton and he sets up so many other players, too. |
Defense has been our constant all season. Putting that pressure on teams helps us during the course of a game. |
Even though we were strong depth-wise last year, we're even stronger this year at all positions. |
Hales has such a big advantage over a lot of Class A schools. Being in the Chicago area, they get to play a lot of great competition and see what they need to improve on. |
He's a good enough player that he's going to get some points. You have to limit his touches and shut everyone else down. It's all about hard work and getting after the ball, and that's something we've done all year and did exceptionally well tonight. |
He's grown up all his life playing basketball with these guys. They've been very open in trying to help him and have kind of taken him under their wings. |
I hope I'm that active when I'm his age. |
I think everybody was excited and a little nervous with Robert out. But Tyler Smith did a great job coming in. What I like is that Tyler is a different kind of player than Robert, but he played solid basketball and set up some guys for easy baskets and made some really nice passes early. He just blended in like he'd been starting forever. It was nice to see a different lineup come out there and succeed. |
I think we were feeling the pressure down the stretch, but our guys hung in there. This vision started a long time ago. Maybe not 35-0, but being state champs. Being 35-0 is just some icing on top of it. |
I would never have dreamed that we would have dominated the schedule. I don't think any of us talked about going undefeated. We talked about getting back to state. No. 1 for all the kids is to get back to state and back in the final four. |
It's been a very nice service. And it's not greasy. They're learning a little bit about nutrition. |
Normally we make that big run and run off and hide, but Serena would have no part of that. Serena played hard and they have a lot of seniors who play with a lot of pride. They came at us hard, but we expected that. But there was no doubt that we wanted to take advantage of our size advantage and pound it inside ... and I thought that was the difference. |
Reed-Custer did a good job of spreading the floor on us. We have seen virtually nothing but the spread offense for the last four games, but Reed-Custer did a good job of it. |
That's why we've got him here, to step up in big games on the defensive end. He plays good help-side defense and does well jumping into the passing lanes. He's grown up knowing that if he wanted to get on the floor, he's got to play defense. |
The last two games, our guys off the bench have done a great job. We had guys come out tonight and you didn't know it. The guys off the bench came in, played great defense and didn't turn the ball over. Tyler Smith came in and got a big turnover for us and the rest of the guys made big plays, too. |