Mike Mislak Quotations

He was steady, he played great defense and was a real key off the bench. Not only for rest and foul trouble, but his contributions on the defensive side and keeping us going.

Jeff made him work hard for every shot and penetration he got. They're a quality team. We're proud of where we are and we're looking to improve.

I am real happy with where we are. These seniors are winners. There was a lot of pressure on this team to get back to the championship game.

Really, we failed to convert and in the second half there was no execution. For Essex, they played a great game. Our defense was lackluster, but they just out-played us.

We're a team of runs and it's hard not to have a letdown after a start like that. We lost a little in the second half and got tentative and stood around. We want to make teams pay in the half court by getting quality looks. We need these situations to experience what it takes to score when we're not getting out on the break or hitting all our shots.

It was a big upset and we were ripe for the upset tonight. Maybe this was good for us.

Justin really went hard. We know that now that we have one less big guy, that everybody has to step up and fulfill their role. In addition to all of his point guard duties and sparking the offense, he was big on the boards. I was really proud of our hustle tonight.

The energy was real high tonight. We came out with a lot of motivation ? we knew this game was important ? and the fact that we shot well helped us keep that going. They had it in their eyes tonight. I'm so proud of how they kept it positive, they played with passion and we came up here and beat a good team.

Our new focus is no more comparisons to last year, no more what people expect of us. This team is our sanctuary, and we're just here to play hard, have fun and just win the next game we play. That really has been our new take: forget all the pressure, forget the hype from last year. It's this year, it's the next game and we have to come together as a team. And we did tonight.

They were very poised. They worked their offense and they shot extremely well.