They were a hot-shooting team over there, and we responded well. We scrambled back into the game. The girls worked hard.

It was wonderful. We've been looking for a break-through round and all of the girls played pretty well. I'm tickled with the performance today.

We were a little behind in the first couple of innings. So I told the girls to be more aggressive. You're not going to get two buckets of balls (to hit) in a game, you're going to get three strikes and you're out. After the first two innings, we came on and got better.

The girls want to be competitive and I let them set what they want to do. But if you asked them, they?d all say Final Four again.

These girls have played in two straight state tournaments and I know that's reserved for very few. We fell just short of the triple crown. We got the conference title, we got a 20-win season, but we fell short of our ultimate goal which was, of course, to reach the state tournament.

It got to the point where I nearly pulled my girls off the floor. I'm not quite sure what they were trying to accomplish, but there wasn't a lot we could do. The game was decided early on.