“We played with poise today. They pressured us but we handled it down the stretch. We've lost some close games and I was worried that would bother us today. But I never saw any doubt in our players' eyes.”
“Missing 20 free throws is inexcusable. I don't know. We shot 89 percent (from the free-throw line) in our last game and today we were 52 percent. I'm trying not to make too much out of it. Most of it is mental and I think we can work through it.”
“I never doubted these guys. I knew we would find a way to finish it. When we were down by double digits, I saw a lot of long faces out there. I just tried to keep encouraging them.”
“My coaching strategy, I like to try and dictate the pace. But against Fisk, you can't always do that. You have to trust your players to make plays. When our guys saw opportunities, they took them. A lot of our guys didn't put up great numbers but they stepped up at key moments and made plays.”
“You can call plays all you want, but you have to have players that can make plays. It wasn't designed that way, but Cole found a lane and made it work.”
“Early on, he was trying to force things that weren't there. I talked to him and told him to trust his teammates. After that, they started playing off of him and he played off of them. He came to play this week.”
“At halftime, I told the guys we needed to keep our lead in the second half. A lot of teams that are as successful as Maryville aren't used to playing from behind. We wanted to put that pressure on them in the second half and not let them make a run.”
