Eli Juarez Quotations

When we were down by 19 I'm sure people left to go watch the other game. It came down to earning some respect. We decided to go out and leave everything on the floor. I think the kids earned that respect with their effort.

When they turn it up, they really turn it up. They gave it everything they had at the end and they nearly got it. Watching that effort, I'm extremely proud.

For us, that's a challenge every week. We have to apply ourselves, which we did last time. Our reaction time when the ball was in the air was extremely quick.

We made the change to man-to-man because they kept hitting the (3-pointers) from outside and we had to do something. We weren't rotating the zone and on the skip pass we kept getting beat. We had to go to man so we could get closer to the shooters.

We had to get the ball inside to attack that zone and we didn't get that accomplished. We made some adjustments, though, and we were more much more effective in the second half than we were in the first quarter.

We have to contain Drew because he does a good job slashing and getting inside. But our primary concern is to defend them inside out.

A new coach, a new system and a young 6-foot-and-under team. I'm extremely proud of what we accomplished this season. We lose only two seniors and we're still learning. We can look forward to a good season next year.

There were a lot of things we did well in that first game and obviously we're hoping for some of that again. Our kids have a pretty good idea what they have to do.

It's the same goal for us ? screen out for rebounds and use our energy in productive ways. That's the easy part of preparing this time of season. We know what we have to do to be in the game.