Tom Grassa Quotations

We needed this win. Can you imagine if we lost tonight, then lost to Peabody on Sunday and had a 5-game losing streak going into the tournament?

We played three straight nights, so we probably didn't have any gas left in our tank. That could be part of it, but we didn't have the legs tonight. Charlestown controlled the boards, and we certainly didn't help ourselves with the turnovers, either. We probably had ten in each half. There was a just a lack of energy and a lack of desire on our part.

They kept coming back. In one 20 second stretch I think it went from a very comfortable 16 point lead to nine, but overall Peabody couldn't keep up the pace.

If you had figured that one of our leading scorers wouldn't play and another one would only score six points, you'd probably say we had a bad night. But a few kids came off the bench to really give us a spark.

In the first half, (Watson) started to get out of his game, which is distributing the ball. But he settled down and in the second half he really helped us control the game.

I thought Terrance's basket swung the tide at the end of overtime. Those are the guys who help you win a game like this.

We shot probably 30 percent. They were tipping in rebounds of their misses, and every time there was a rebound, there was a Charlestown jersey grabbing it. They're athletic, but I've seen us on occasion be just as athletic.

We actually used three different presses in the second half. Sometimes the press can backfire and lead to a lot of fast break baskets for the other team, but we managed to keep our poise and control.

We really struggled against that zone because we went ice cold. We seemed to only be able to generate offense off some offensive rebounds or some steals.

The Classical-Salem rivalry has been going on for 30 years. We could have had 20 losses coming into tonight and this would have been an absolutely huge game for us.