That was huge. We were in a zone and he brought them back. He was three or four feet behind the line and he buried them. |
That's who we wanted (to play). They're playing great basketball. We're excited. |
The game plan all week was to get the ball inside. We have more size than them, so we wanted to take advantage of that. If they wanted to double (team), then we'd look for our shooters on the outside. |
There's not a lot of teams around the state of Illinois that can say they have that type schedule left. We have it (tough schedule) for a reason. We want to be tournament tested and tournament ready. |
They got it down to four, but we closed out the game well. We didn't turn the ball over, we did all the things needed to win. |
They had only two field goals (a pair of three-pointers out of East's zone defense from Pat Cummings) in the fourth quarter. They had 21 free throws. That's what beat us. That's where we got beat. Our team knows it. |
They're the defending (tournament) champs. We've seen them and they're not a 12 seed. |
We felt good going into the fourth quarter. That's (down 42-37) where we wanted it to be. We did not want this game to get in the 70s. |
We got 16th place last year and we weren't walking out of there feeling too good about ourselves. Last year, there were five top-25 teams there. This year, we're all about the same. |
We had a great second half. We're a senior-dominated team and we need to play like seniors. In that first half, we just didn't play like seniors. We weren't flat -- we played scared. |
We let their two leading scorers get off. They're both great players. That's why they got to the Sweet 16 last year. |
We outsized them so we had to use that as an advantage. At one point, he (Fenton coach Dennis Cromer) went with that small lineup. I looked across (the court) and every kid we had out there was bigger (than them) except Corey (Murtaugh). That's a huge advantage. |
We were up one and we got a rebound. But they got a key steal, basket and foul shot. That was a huge turnaround. Then, they got another three-point play and next thing you know, we're down five. We felt that was the breaking point of the game. |
We're going to go as far as our defense takes us. They don't want to let each other down and just feed off each other. |
We're playing our best basketball right now. |