It all boils down to Neil tonight. He's a kid that just does a terrific job on both ends of the floor. He's a kid we want all our youngsters to look up to.
We've told the kids that our best way to win a championship is through defense. I thought coming into the season defense would a strong point but I think we've gotten into an offensive frame of mind at times. We're trying to get back to basics with defense.
This was a tough place to play and we had to just go about our business. Give them credit, they played hard. We started to take control in the fourth. It was nice to see the kids face some sort of adversity, to be in a close game and pull it out.
He's a great kid. He plays hard at both ends.
Obviously, the dunk was huge because of the crowd. That dunk set the tone for the night, especially out of a half-court set. After that, it was our game to lose. The kids did a tremendous job of finishing it out.
Even though he's 6-7, it's still tough to get him the ball sometimes. We just didn't do a very good job of getting him the ball, but at the same time you're not going to be able to force it in there and play your game.
It boils down to how well they shot the ball. If they don't shoot the ball that well, we could win that game. The McConnell kid was lights-out tonight. We knew he was good, but every time they needed a bucket late, they came up with a bucket.
We certainly didn't make the shots when we needed them. We can't continue to play with just two players (Lewis and Matthew Brown), we need kids to step up. This game hasn't changed in a million years, kids just have to hit their shots.
Offensively, I thought it was one of the best games we played in years. The kids moved the balls and were unselfish.
They play really tenacious defense. When you come to playoff time, you're only as good as your role players and our role players really didn't score tonight but at the same time they played terrific defense which kept us in the game.