Ncaa Quotations | Page 5

He's a great kid and a great competitor. He's going to bounce back and be great in the NCAA Tournament. We need to beat Arizona, but it's hard to beat a good team like Arizona three times. They've improved since we've last seen them.

Here we watch it minute by minute. When you force it underground, anything is possible. Apparently that's a risk the NCAA is willing to take.

Last year I think we wanted to be part of the NCAA Tournament so badly we didn't worry about the things that we could control, which is making our team better. That's what we're doing this year.

Losing this game, we basically know that we blew our chance for an at-large bid. We know that we have to come back here to win three games to go to the NCAA Tournament.

Losing is not fun, but we still got here. Nobody thought we'd get here and we did. Playing in the NCAA Tournament is a great way to end.

Last year, when I was trying to decide where to go, that was one of my main things -- going to the NCAA Tournament. That's something I wanted to do since I was 3 or 4 years old.

Last year we were kind of the underdog. This year, since we won the NCAA championship, we've got that target on our shoulders.

Last year, we were 11 freshmen just trying to get by. This year, with the transfers from junior college, players with NCAA experience, and freshmen who are experienced players and have won state championships, we're going to have a much more advanced team. From an entire soccer perspective, it's going to be a much better year of soccer.

Last year, we went 10-0 non-conference. It was huge because we did not have the same strength of schedule that we have this year. Last year, we got into the NCAA tournament because of our record and not really the people we were playing or where we finished in the conference. As a team goal, we are trying to get to the same place we were last year.

When the NCAA added the 12th game, we wanted to look for years where there was a 14-week window to the season to give us flexibility in picking a date for this series. The 2008 and 2013 calendar years allow us to do just that. In every other year, there are just 13 weeks to play 12 games, giving you less flexibility to schedule games and opponents.