East is still the team to beat. It's going to be a challenge. |
He can do that. He did a good job of taking it to the basket. |
I think we've been playing some of our best basketball the last few weeks. And tonight was no exception. |
I think you've still got to get through East, but North's been playing as well as anybody. It's a tough task this year. |
I thought the kids played hard and took care of the basketball. We just went through some cold stretches, and we couldn't get enough defensive stops to get the victory. |
In the first quarter for six minutes I thought we played good. I think that our kids thought 'this is going to be easy,' and kind of let up. You can't let up in the tournament. |
Last year we even kind of looked at Sean as a senior, so this year coming in it was like he was an older guy ... a veteran. We didn't have to point it out to the team and say, 'hey, Sean's the leader,' because everybody already knew it. |
Mike Richardson was huge for us. When you have a guy blocking shots like that, that changes the other team's complexion. |
Our kids battled. I told the kids at the end of the game that I was happy they didn't give up. They could have given up when we were down double digits in the fourth quarter, but they played all the way up until the end. |
Right now we're just focused on West. They have some athletic kids on that team. If we are fortunate enough to get past them, we look forward to getting another chance against East. |
That's what big-time players do. They put teams on their shoulders, and he hit some big shots tonight. |
They really came out and turned it up defensively in the second half. We struggled to get any looks and the basket, and when we did, we couldn't finish. |
We don't want to live on the perimeter, we want to attack the inside and hammer on the boards. When you have a 6-4 point guard and two 6-3 swingmen, you have an opportunity to keep the ball alive and make some things happen inside, and that's what we're banking on. |
We made a few mini-runs that kept us in the lead ... our kids were able to put together a couple flurries. Those were important, because we knew it was going to be a challenge tonight. |
We went on a good run there, but we couldn't get that one big bucket or big stop that we needed. I definitely can't fault our guys though, they fought hard. |