I thought it was like winning the lottery. The leads were real solid: Customers were calling us and saying, 'Will you be my broker?

They were so anal and uptight about following everything to the letter before the IPO, but here was the CEO who was running a shell game with half a billion dollars.

It was like you just told me my brother is an ax murderer.

I thought [Friday's semifinal] was the big one for us. After winning that, there was no pressure on us. All the pressure was on Freedom. We came out more relaxed and just played our game.

I told the kids that we have been winning, and maybe we needed a little fire under us. We need to get refocused.

We talked about winning the first state game. Coach Corby was saying that for six years he was waiting to give this speech. He had six years to prepare, so he had a pretty good speech.