We got a little comfortable with the lead. Nobody was scoring for us any more, and their press was hurting us.

The coach took me out early on. He said I was playing too emotionally. I found my rhythm later on in the game. You've got to come out hot right away because, otherwise, teams will take it away from you, which is what Geneva did.

I think we came out a little scared. We just weren't hustling on defense.

Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we'll do, to press forward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain.

I told our guys at halftime that they were going to come out and press us and trap us, and that's just what they did. But I was proud of how our guys played.

Aside from his scintilla of candor, Mr. Bush is still not leveling with us. As he said at his press conference on Monday, 'the enemies of freedom' know that 'a democratic Iraq will be a decisive blow to their ambitions because free people will never choose to live in tyranny.' They may choose to live in a theocracy, though. Americans did.