John Kuckel
John Kuckel
badly coming couple defensive effort games kids last looking mentality needed point realized road season sign slightly win
That's really the defensive effort we've been looking for all season. Hopefully, it's a sign of us coming together. It's our first road win and we're at the point in the season where we badly needed it. The kids realized that and showed up with a slightly different mentality then we've had the last couple of games and it showed on the court.
coming days defend defended focus last practice stopping talked three
Our focus the last two or three days in practice has been stopping people. That's all we talked about coming in. We wanted to be able to defend and I thought we defended as well as we could in the first half.
box effort entire final free game half hit hyde limit looks open played second sustain tonight
If we could sustain the effort we got in the second half for an entire game, we'd be all right. In the final 16 we played our butts off, but tonight Hyde hit their open looks and free throws, and we didn't box out well enough the entire game to limit their second chances.
conference hard kids minutes teams tough
Give Westbrook credit. Those kids play hard. They don't quit. They did the same thing to us at our place when they got us. They play tough wire-to-wire. They could have rolled over. Teams are well-coached in this conference and they all play hard every night. And if you don't play hard for 32 minutes you're not going to get a W.
dangerous floor great guys job past playing running team today transition
In the past we've been running the floor just in spurts, today we consistently got up and down the floor. We try to get the big guys down the floor and Sullivan, Pratt and Sierpinski did a great job of that today. We're a much more dangerous team when we're getting up and down in transition then when we're playing slow.
adjustment adversity coach coming finished game great group grow guys handled helps job late learned nice period seniors short situation success successful team year younger
Unfortunately, we finished one game short of where we wanted to be. The seniors did a nice job with the situation they had. They had a new coach come in pretty late in the game. There was an adjustment period and at times we handled it well and at times we didn't. We have a great group of younger guys coming up. Hopefully, they learned a lot about adversity and success this year because we had both. Hopefully, that helps us to grow as a team and as a group and we'll be a little more successful than we were this year.