We're having fun and it looks like we're picking it up. We've got the confidence to score and we've got a strong defense and everybody needs to be playing their best game. This is the first step in getting to the regional tournament and winning it.

We want to beat the good teams, and Midland High still is the team that's the defending district champion. We know these other teams and they know us. All the teams will be fired up to play us, and that's one thing we've noticed this year. Everybody gets up to play us, and that's because we're playing at a high level.

We didn't connect. It wasn't lack of effort. It was lack of preparation and passing the ball. They played hard, they busted their butt to win the ball, but we didn't play together and that's what we've been doing in our workouts. Our effort was there, but our team play wasn't.

We deserved to win this game. It was a game we needed to win and we deserved to win it because of the way we started to play. The players just talked to each other, and the second half was the way we need to play going into the playoffs.

Any time that we get a shutout, that's kind of like a team thing. We believe that the offense needs to control the ball to keep the pressure off the defense.

Last week we were frustrated (against Abilene Cooper) but not (Friday). We knew this was a good team and we just told them to keep the ball on the ground and keep playing.

Last year, playing (games) like this, it was what I called a feeding frenzy. Everybody pushed up, there was no shape and we just tried to bang away. This time, we were still working on stuff, pulling the ball back around and trying to create space. I think that shows some maturity and that's what we tried to do.

We talked about playing good passes to the feet and keeping the ball out of the air. Truthfully, that's the way we play best, when we just one-touch the ball around the everybody's moving into spots. That was fun.

We started losing this game two days ago. I think we were having a little too much fun in practice and not getting things done that we needed to get done. The effort was there, but we just could not finish.