Vance Downs Quotations

On a different night, we knock down some of those open looks, and obviously it's a different game.

He's hit some big shots for us during the tournament, and I thought it had a chance.

Jordan's been practicing with us since January, so he knows how to run our offense, and he's been getting better every night. We knew this last two to three weeks that he was ready. As far as basketball maturity goes, he's well beyond his years. He's a pretty cool customer.

I thought the kids gave a great effort and guarded some of (the Johnston players) really well. We just wish we could have come up with a few more defensive rebounds there in the last few possessions.

We just didn't bring a lot of energy to the floor, and Ankeny took advantage of that.

We were only down by eight, and we started to get into some foul trouble and they pulled away.

We went a little smaller. The kids just started playing like they were capable of playing.

(Fatigue) certainly could've been a factor late in the game. It took a lot of energy having to fight back to six points from being down 13. I have to give my kids credit though because they kept fighting.

There was a little frustration because of the mental errors, but I was really impressed with the kids fighting through that. Some teams would've given up in those situations, but they kept fighting, and I was really proud of them. They played some awfully good basketball tonight before that fourth quarter.

Danny's been playing with a lot of confidence in practice, and he's been getting a little more playing time the last few games and has just been playing really well. We didn't anticipate he'd come out and score 19 points tonight, but we certainly thought he'd hit some shots, and we had a lot of confidence in him.

I hope we're playing our best basketball at the right time of the year. Everybody sets their sights for the postseason and wants to be playing their best basketball. I hope we can play even better on Tuesday.

I'd say about the mid-point of the third quarter, they got on a run and hit some big shots. There were stretches of that quarter where we didn't guard very well. We've got to make those corrections and get better (defensively).

The kids are having fun, and I'm sure that comes along with winning. We're playing a lot better as a team. The challenge now is to keep improving in February, and we have to do that if we want to play as well as can at the end of the season.

The kids are disappointed because we really wanted to win this game. But even in the loss it gives the kids a certain level of confidence heading into the playoffs; we played extremely hard.

The unforced turnovers are a concern. We got ahead of ourselves a little bit and maybe tried to play a little too fast a few times. Give Fort Dodge credit because they changed up defenses on us a lot and brought a lot of length and athleticism to the floor.