The kids had a chance to execute against a top quality team. They are solid all the way around, and we wanted to get experience against them.

One of the purposes of the event is to give kids a chance to play where the state championships are played.

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.

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.

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