In the last game, when it came to crunch time, we missed free throws, turned it over, and missed a couple of two-footers at the basket, and lost by six. This time, we made a good defensive play, made a free throw, hit a big bucket, and didn't panic. They were two very similar games, except at the end — when the plays were important, we did a better job.

We talked a lot about their big guy -- he can score 30 points a game. We sort of picked our poison and said let's defend him as best we can and know where their two best shooters are and hope they don't get hot.

I think we had a nice size advantage, which is always a big help. McMinnville is disciplined and they always play hard and don't make many mistakes. They never seem to beat themselves.

The coaches were pleased with a lot of parts of that game. I hope it's steering us toward these important league games next week (McMinnville and Tigard). We've had a lot of bum luck so far with injuries, guys quitting, and we've got a guy who's out of the country, so we've been playing mostly with seven guys. That's been tough.

We were in a little bit of a tight spot late. Austin had fouled out, Sam had four fouls and with 1:50 to go, AJ fouled out. Fortunately, Rickey made a nice play for us and I had to have Stephan, who hasn't played at all for us, come in and inbound the ball. We were up by five when AJ went out and every time it looked like we had them buried, they'd hit a big shot.

We've been kind of a skeleton crew all year. It's had an affect on us from the start, but we're hoping we'll get everyone back soon. Our goal is to try and improve our level of play the rest of the way.