I look at the team in all total aspects. We had four guys in double figures tonight, and if you're going to have two of them (over 20 points) with that, it's hard to beat.

I take my hat off to Pope. They competed and went down fighting. We did some good things, but there's plenty of room for improvement. We're not quite where I want to be yet.

We made progress as a team. The whole thing benefited us. Some people from USA Today said that if you win one game in this tournament, you've done good.

We've got two more games to go through before we can start talking. Right now, we'll let our basketball do the talking for us.

We knew we had to come out and play hard. (North Cobb has) the ability to control the tempo. I do believe we could've done a better job, but our kids played hard, and we moved the ball around well.

It will be a very good test for us. They'll be ready to play, and so will we.

We'll take this one and run. We didn't quite play like we should have, but I'm proud of the effort our kids gave and the fact that we were able to do well against a great team.

It's always a good, clean rivalry. It's something we always look forward to.

(Cherokee) fought hard. They made their run (in the fourth quarter), and they were right there. But we battled through.