Some of the plays we ran (in high school) were plays we'd been running for eight years.

It helped that we played the same defense from the time we were in the AAU program to when we were in high school. It's a big-time advantage to have that much practice.

If you play with a guy for seven or eight years, you know his tendencies. You know what he's going to do next without thinking about it. It helps you play with a lot more confidence.

I inherited the lead about the middle of the first turn, and he was running real easy. Then on the backside I don't know if he lost interest, but I really thought I was out of horse. About the half-mile pole I had to pull the stick out and go to work on him, and he responded.

I was a little concerned about that coming in and he might have been wondering what he was running on, but he liked it. Frankie [Brothers] did a great job getting him ready. The track can be tiring but he was fit today and ready for it.

Our game plan was to come out running, make them commit, and that's what happened. It almost turned out like we drew it up. We wanted to make them run, make them commit to go by you, get to the outside and then put in a very nice run and that's exactly what happened.