Troy Graefe Quotations

I don't know that I've ever coached a team that has won in this gym.

I thought it seemed like every team had one or two pretty good players that you had to focus your defense on. You certainly had to pay attention to those guys or your chances of winning were slim.

They really picked up the intensity much more aggressively. It was possession by possession. We went on a run in the third with nine unanswered points and cut their lead to three. When that happened, we had the confidence we needed to finish it.

It was huge, and that was the most important outcome of the night. This is the hardest we've played since Longmont. We're the kind of team that we have to be energetic and have to play with passion against the people we're playing in order to be successful. If we do that, we're pretty good. If we don't, then we're pretty average, and that was evident our last two times out.

Coach Thompson comes to just about every game and those guys who played for him and Coach Baggot talk about how they used to just terrorize teams with their defense. Coach Hicks is here a lot and we talk a lot, and his teams obviously were great defensively. ... That tradition is an advantage we have.

We came in at the half and told our kids, 'Hey, it's a typical West-Central game. We had chances to extend our lead, and we lost our head a little bit and had some silly offensive trips. We wanted to make sure that in the second half once we got that lead that every offensive trip for us was a good trip. I thought we showed a little bit of maturity that way in the second half.

Those two guys are our leaders, and they do more than just score and get rebounds and get steals. They give courage to the rest of the guys with the way they play.

Isiah Martinez had a great day, and if you're not your best you need someone to step up.

It's like immediate energy. He just comes in, and something happens. The other night against Mountain View it was a critical time in the game, and he just took his man off the dribble hard and scored a big basket for us. It was one of those possessions where we were kind of starting to stagger a little bit, and he got us settled again with a big basket. He's capable of doing those kind of things.

Our statistician has harped on us all season that we are probably the only team in the state that has been up at the half in every single game we've played.