Al Gooden
Al Gooden
faces forest guys last park playing regardless state understand
We want to get back to state anytime, regardless of who we're playing. We wanted to get back to the championship, but what playing Forest Park does is they can put faces with that team. When you say Forest Park, they can see those guys and understand who they are from playing them last year.
guys teach
These new guys are excited, but you can't teach experience.
against guys opponents practice prepare quickness
I don't know (how the opponents prepare for the Hawks' quickness). If you don't have it, you can't prepare for it. For us, we practice against quickness every day. We've got some good, quick guys on the reserve.
guys handle mentally stuff team tough
We had some young guys and they weren't mentally tough enough to handle that. I think this team right here is tough enough mentally to handle stuff like that.
bench effort gave guys looking
The guys off the bench really gave us the effort we have been looking for.
great telling week
It was great to see Jermaine there. He had been telling me all week he was going to be here.
ask hard kids playing state teams
Not very. You go ask the teams who didn't get down here how disappointed they are. I am here playing for the state championship. It is not frustrating or anything like that. You want to win, but as a coach, you ask your kids to just play as hard and give it all they have.
gonna hung kids sit tough tribute
It's been tough this year, it's been tough. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you a story. It's been tough, and our kids struggled. But it's a tribute to them how they hung together.
basketball coming forced good hit job kids played shots
The kids played hard. As a coach, that's what you want to happen. We hit some shots (early), forced some turnovers. But they're a good basketball team. They're not here for no reason. They did a good job coming back.
good guards knew low quality
Their guards did a good job, and they were the key. We knew we were low on guards, and they had two quality guards.
bring good playing teams
They bring good size. They aren't so big for us because we play a lot of teams with size, though. Hopefully, we will be used to playing with teams that size, which I think we are.
ball came good inside job steal
We had them right there at the end of the game. We got the steal and came down and Pryce got inside and couldn't get the ball up. He did a good job getting down there.
deeper feet foul good guard job kept quit reaching sit zone
We sit down in that zone and guard the perimeter, and kept our feet and quit reaching. That's why we went to the zone, because we were reaching too much. I think we did a good job of shadowing them and kept them from penetrating. And it prevented us from getting deeper in foul trouble.
That's what we wanted to do, get it to him as much as we could.