Marvin Emerson Quotations

We're going to keep pushing. We want to go up the turnpike (to the PIAA championship game in Hershey), but its not going to be easy.

We knew they were solid. That team can play, and we knew that. We had a little bit of an off night, but they gave us all we wanted.

We were bigger and we got caught up in a couple of picks and screens. I decided to go small late in the game with the match ups and switch picks. I kept one big guy in.

We've shot like this before. Actually, we've had games where we shot better from the outside. I'm not saying we shoot like that every game, but we can hit them if we get them.

He has great athleticism. He plays the game well and he's a very skillful kid. The sky's the limit for him.

He felt like he didn't play well in that game. Jonathan played well tonight.

He showed his leadership tonight. But he's grown so much both on and off the court. He knows that because of who he is, people are going to always be watching him, waiting for him to trip up. He knows that he has to carry himself well and be a decent citizen. He's doing that.

Heck, he made one from the other foul line to send it into overtime here two years ago. It's never over with him.

People need to remember that Herb is just 16 years old. I don't know if people always consider that. There is a lot of pressure on him, and I think he handles it as well as could be expected for someone his age.

Some people can say Herb had a lot of garbage points today. I say it was good position. It was Herb outworking their big guys.

That changed the way we played defense. We couldn't be as aggressive as we wanted to.

I'm standing here with a group of young men who have grown tremendously in the past couple of months.

We just broke down. We wanted the ball inside and it didn't get there.

The defense did a great job in the second half. We wanted to make some things happen, and we usually do that with our defense.

We weren't concerned with Beaver Falls. They were in the other bracket. We wanted to take care of our business.

You hear so much about it. I wanted to judge it for myself.

When you look up the word team in the dictionary his picture is there.

We went smaller at the end. For years, we've said that defense wins championships, and we played pretty good defense in the last minute and a half.

Every team is going to have some rough patches. Great teams overcome the rough patches. I thought it took us too long to respond tonight, but we play hard and we're going to get better.

At the beginning of the year, we didn't have a lot of confidence at point guard. You need a point guard with some swagger and he's brought that confidence to us.

Don't judge us on the first game, and don't judge us tonight. We'll be a different team when we get to February. And Quaker Valley will be there with us.

That's huge. Here's a guy who's 6-10, and not only can he score, but he's not afraid to give up the ball. He had around eight or 10 assists; that's another 20 points he contributed to.

I told the guys at halftime that's why everybody practices. We just needed to be patient, get into our offense, and not let them get a run.

In the first half, we were running around like it was the state track meet. I told our guys to just slow down. We did in the second half and played more under control.

He's probably the best 6-9 kid I've seen around here ever. I've never seen one with the size and ability he has to play the game. You don't find that too often. How many 6-9 kids can handle the ball, shoot it, are very agile and can create for himself and his teammates?

I didn't have to coax him to come out or anything. He told me last season that he was going to come out this year.

He's very aggressive -- smart and plays hard all the time.

He can make plays without scoring. He can catch the ball on the wing and draw a lot of attention. He can catch it on the block and draw a lot of attention. You can guard him one-on-one or you double- and triple-team him. Either way, he finds the open man.

He brings aggressiveness and takes some of the pressure off us having to go inside to score. The injuries from football slowed him some at the start of the season, but he's starting to come on.