Doug Evans Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Winnebago is one of the top teams in the state. They could easily be undefeated and they have one of the best offensive players in the state. It will be a big challenge for us.

We played better against Hinckley, but we're still not at the level where we need to be. We're still not as in sync both offensively and defensively, but we're getting better. We have to find that rhythm soon.

Well, I think these guys know it's been a vision since we walked out of Peoria last year. That vision started last year the day after we got home -- of starting to try that march again. This has been a 300-and-something-day march. And we want to continue on.

Tyler has been one of the biggest promoters of Seth. It almost brings a tear to my eye just talking about it. He's been like a big brother to him. I don't have enough adjectives to describe how great Tyler has been this year.

We came out with lots of energy. Everybody played well and it was tough for Reed-Custer to get good looks at the basket.

We came out with good intensity tonight. We were focused and ready to go.

We really didn't get the game in our control until about three minutes to go in the game.

We've defeated Marquette twice. On both occasions, we played pretty aggressively on the defensive end. We need to continue that trend against Serena. It should be an interesting game.

We've got the No. 1 ranking in the state, but everyone knows, especially in the northern half of the state, to win a state title, you have to beat Hales.

We will have a size advantage. I'll tell you one thing, we had better be ready to stop Serena and step out to defend the three-point shot. We will definitely need to defend because Serena has many capable long-range shooters.

We've played seven games in eight or nine days with Christmas thrown in there. We are ready for a break.

We didn't know that until one of you guys told us. Our focus has been on first getting here, then on getting this one so that we're playing two games on Saturday. If (being undefeated) happens, that's great, but we hadn't thought about it.

We didn't know it until (a reporter) told us. Thanks for the pressure.

Even though we were strong depth-wise last year, we're even stronger this year at all positions.

There's no doubt that since we walked off the court last year we've had the vision of getting back here.

There's no doubt that since we walked off the court here last year that we've had the vision of being back here. It's been a dream of ours, we've worked very hard and been very dedicated to that dream for a long time now, and now the dream has come true.

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.

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.

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.

It's been a very nice service. And it's not greasy. They're learning a little bit about nutrition.

I hope I'm that active when I'm his age.

This is a great opportunity for residents to reduce water consumption by effectively managing their irrigation. The city feels this cooperative effort with CVWD will provide an ongoing effort to conserve water.

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.