We've always said that you can't win the league in the first round of the season but you can lose it. I think that is the great part of playing in the NCC.
I think it's why they've been good the last third of the season. Their kids were stepping up and hitting shots.
That's been a key for us. We've been able to play 10 kids.
We really want to be strong starters. The first three minutes of the game and the first three minutes of the second half are very key for us. If you look at what we did, we led 8-3 at the start of the game, and then we came out and scored the first seven of the second half.
We haven't been a real tremendous consistent team offensively. Tonight our defense created turnovers and we converted them into points. Our defense has been solid all year. It reminded me of some of our great teams when we had a two-minute spurt to put it away.
We defended really, really well. We can be a pretty good team if we can make a few shots.
We had some open looks, but the key was we didn't make shots. We didn't do a good job of taking it at them early, and in the second half we took the attitude if they block the shot, then they block the shot.
This was something we worked to get. It was important for us.
This was a crucial win for us. We were able to get out to a fast start.
We kind of let them hang around and get some confidence, but down the stretch I think we made some good decisions and some good defensive plays.
You have to give Crestline a lot of credit there. We wanted to come out and extend the floor a little bit more and keep them out of the lane.
We weren't really trying to get the ball inside, either. But in the second half we made a conscious effort to put the ball in Matt's hands.
Every year our goal is to win the conference. We're getting better.
It was important for us to get that early lead then maintain it throughout the game.
As a coaching staff, I thought that our coaches did a great job of preparing. We debated about how we wanted to come out and we decided to come out aggressively. Getting out to that fast start really helped.
In the second half we got even better defensively. When you play a lot of kids, you can get excellent effort. But a possible disadvantage of playing a lot of kids is that sometimes you don't get the consistency on offense that you would like.
Andrew has played so well over the last two weeks.