We did what we had to do down the stretch, but those Shine boys are tough. They really make us go.

His half-court man-to-man defense put the clamps on us. We started rushing our shots and lost our composure.

Twice (late in the fourth quarter), we had one-and-ones, and we got the rebounds. That's big. We get that rebound, there goes another 10 seconds off the clock.

Honestly, this is why we worked so hard to get the number two seed, to get this first game.

After what this team went through last year, to be 17-8 and one game away from playing in the state playoffs, I'm overwhelmed. All my kids are still here and they seem to be having fun. Heck, they even try to execute stuff now when I call out a play.

We just played really good defense. They can flat run. This is a team that came out and scored around 80 points on us the last time we played, and we held them to 55.