2009 Clark High School Tournament
Quotes
Courtesy of the Telegram and Gazette
February 21, 2009
“We have pretty decently balanced scoring throughout the entire team, and anyone can go off at any given time, and it was just my turn tonight.” “It helps us out that you really can’t double on anybody, because anybody can make a big shot. Luckily they keyed on Stefan and Copeland tonight, and I just hit my shots.”
--Ben Bickford, SUTTON
“All season we’ve been having trouble coming out strong, but I thought for most of this tournament we have, and that’s what’s been working for us.”
--Stefan Forsbeg, SUTTON
“We knew we had to make sure we were going to execute.” “We got tired at one point, but we have such a good bench, it makes it easy, and we didn’t miss a beat.”
--Jim Donnelly, SUTTON COACH
“We’ve done a really good job containing the other teams’ players, and that’s been a key to a lot of our victories.”
--Stefan Forsbeg, SUTTON
“We knew they weren’t going to give us, so we stayed with the press and stayed with the game plan and just worked through it.”
--Ben Bickford, SUTTON
“He showed what he’s capable of doing.” “He played well inside outside and against the clock. He was almost impossible to guard.”
--Jim Donnelly, SUTTON COACH
“You focus on one guy, the other guy will hit the shot.” “You focus on two guys, another one will put it in the basket. We have so many players that can take over a game.”
--Stefan Forsbeg, SUTTON
“Seeds mean nothing.” “When you get to this tournament, I’ve seen No. 1 seeds lose to No. 8 seeds every year. You never know what’s going to happen. We came in here thinking we had a pretty good shot at it.”
-- Keith Woods, GROTON-DUNSTABLE COACH
“Ryan’s huge so you can’t really do much against him.”
-- Derek McCaffrey, GROTON-DUNSTABLE
“The difference with this team is they’re tall, but they can run the floor, too.”
-- Victor Martinez, SOUTHBRIDGE
“Our goal was to shut them down defensively.” “We knew they liked to run. We knew they wanted to live off the turnovers, and I thought we did a pretty good job of running our style game.”
-- Keith Woods, GROTON-DUNSTABLE COACH
“The first game we got by on the skin of our teeth and that gave us life.”
“They did a nice job defensively and came at us on the defensive end. We had a tough start to the game, but I thought our guys played hard, and I’m proud of them.” “They have a lot of weapons, and we did a nice job with Forsberg and a decent job with Copeland, but it was a lot of their other guys that really hurt us.”
--John Patraitis, GRAFTON
February 19, 2009
"I probably lost 10 years off my life just this week. But it’s been fun."
-- Keith Woods, GROTON-DUNSTABLE COACH
“Tonight my senior came through.” “He’s the only one I’ve got (all-star Mike Silinonte is currently injured) and tonight he hit two of the biggest shots of his career.”
-- Keith Woods, GROTON-DUNSTABLE COACH
“The first one was just an open look.” “My coach would have been on me if I didn’t let it go.”
-- Pat McKinney, GROTON-DUNSTABLE
“We just didn’t rotate.” “Just a bad move late in the game unfortunately.”
-- Dan LaRoche, QUABBIN
“Their defense was pretty intense.” “They were really getting up in the passing lanes. We didn’t take care of the ball and we missed a ton of layups.”
-- Dan LaRoche, QUABBIN
"We’re a little shocked, and we can say we’re one of the few teams that made it to the Clark championship. It was a lot tougher playing them a third time, but we did what we had to do and came out with a win."
-- Southbridge’s Victor Martinez
“We told ourselves we came too far to lose.”
-- Jose DeLeon, SOUTHBRIDGE
“We didn’t play too well, but down the stretch we had a couple key rebounds and it fell our way.”
-- Jose DeLeon, SOUTHBRIDGE
“We’ve been predominantly a second-half team all year and we’ve been better in the third quarter than the other three.” “We kept our poise in the first quarter and we got some good breaks in the fourth quarter, and we were able to ride that to the end of the game.”
-- Bow Fowler, SOUTHBRIDGE
“We manned up on them pretty well, but they got some drives to the basket we shouldn’t have given away.” “We had a little bit of fatigue at the end … but I thought they gave everything they had.”
-- Duane Corriveau, SHEPHERD HILL
“We couldn’t finish it off.” “We had our chances, but we couldn’t hit our shots down the stretch.”
-- Kevin Pastore, SHEPHERD HILL
February 18, 2009
“We got into the bonus quickly, which allowed us to take it to the hoop and get control of the pace of the game,”
“We got a few fouls and were able to keep rolling.”
-- Trevor Stock, GRAFTON
“We rebounded, and that made the biggest difference in the second half.” “We were able to hit our shots and make it to the free-throw line.”
-- Mark Bradshaw, GRAFTON
“He came in and gave us some energy off the bench, taking a couple charges and getting some offensive rebounds and gave us a spark off the bench.” “I’m really proud of him.”
-- John Patraitis, GRAFTON COACH
“I thought we started off getting really good looks, but then we kind of lost our rhythm, and we weren’t knocking down shots we normally knock down.” “I thought we did a solid job in the first half on defense on Stock, but he just had a tremendous second half, hitting some big shots and making most of his free throws.”
-- Ethan Roe, BMR COACH
“We really wanted to redeem ourselves and make it to the final.”
-- Stefan Forsberg, SUTTON
“There’s a focus and a respect and an appreciation for this tournament.” “We’re thrilled to get the chance to play Saturday.”
-- Jim Donnelly, SUTTON COACH
“Offensively, it was just a nightmare performance.” “We normally pass and handle the ball well, and tonight we struggled. It was a tough time to do it.”
-- Rick Hastings, LUNENBURG COACH
“I had some open looks that I usually make.” “I just wasn’t hitting them.”
-- D.J. Guillette, LUNENBURG
“When I got the ball in the middle, I just felt I could score every time.”
-- Jon Copeland, SUTTON
February 16, 2009
"Double-overtime buzzer-beater? How do you beat that?"
-- Keith Woods, GROTON DUNSTABLE COACH
“With time running down, there was nothing I could do but put it up.” “It actually did feel pretty good when it left my hands and I watched it the whole way. I didn’t know if it was a 2 or a 3. I looked at the scoreboard. It was just unbelievable.”
-- Cam Willcox, GROTON DUNSTABLE
“It was the craziest game I’ve ever been iN,” “And it being in the Clark made it more unbelievable.”
--Ryan Romich, GROTON DUNSTABLE
“It came down to all the little things.” “We worked so hard. It’s frustrating, but it’s part of the game.”
-- Nick DiBlasi, HUDSON
“Hippert knew the play that we had designed.” “I was expecting that if I spun off of him, I’d be able to get open.”
--Brian Westgate, SHEPHERD HILL
"We always win with our defense and quickness."
--Jose DeLeon, SOUTHBRIDGE
“They couldn’t get near the basket at all.” “Our help was there, our closeouts were there. They had to settle for 3s.”
-- Chris Foley, QUABBIN
“When I saw him get it uncontested.” “I was surprised, to be honest with you.”
-- Duane Corriveau, SHEPHERD HILL COACH
“The Clark is fun in that, even though you’re disappointed when you lose. you still have the districts. We’ve got to get ready for the districts. We can’t get too distraught about this loss.”
--Paul Baker, NORTHBRIDGE COACH
“I think there were a lot of nerves. There were a lot of expectations coming in and I think the nerves took hold.”
--Bob Fowler, SOUTHBRIDGE COACH
“I thought our defense did a really good job in the first half. “We rebounded and we were able to slow the game down. In the second half, their quickness and their press were more than we’ve seen the whole season. Too many turnovers and easy transition baskets for them.”
--Eric Dawley, OAKMONT COACH
“Things started to snowball and we didn’t have anyone step up and make a big play or a big shot."
--Scott Dion, DAVID PROUTY COACH
“Well, that’s our thing. Every game has to be a playoff game for us and every possession counts. We’re not a group of great scorers, we’re just a group of hardworking individuals.”
-- Dennis Dextradeur, QUABBIN COACH
February 15, 2009
“We’ve been stressing defense, so we wanted to come out with a defense-first mentality and we really came out intense on defense and working really hard on the glass and creating our transition offense,” Grafton coach John Patraitis said. “We came out well today and I was happy with it.”
“We came out with the right mind-set, and we worked the ball inside to Chris and kicked it back out to our guys who got hot outside,”
-- John Patraitis, GRAFTON COACH
“We never got into it today, and that’s too bad.” “It was like going to a big dance with Cybill Shepherd but going home with Rosie O’Donnell.”
--Tony Gannon, CLINTON COACH
“We felt pretty good, up by nine.” “We felt like we had a chance to get the game going our way. They came back against us. They played a better fourth quarter than we did.”
--Paul Constantino, WEST BOYLSTON COACH
Lunenburg coach Rick Hastings called a timeout to set up the Xarras-to-Guillette basket.
“They’ve been terrific all season,”
--Rick Hasting, LUNENBURG COACH
“We played some great defense from the start, holding them to eight points in the first quarter, and we just coasted from there.” “It was important to come out and play the basketball we know we can play, because we sometimes get away from that. All we have to do is play really good defense, and we can play some really great ball.”
--Mark Bradshaw, GRADTON
“We had a no-lose mentality coming in.” “Once we got down by nine, we took it basket-by-basket, focused on getting stops at the defensive end and focused on getting the ball in the lane and getting high-percentage shots.”
--Mike Xarras, LUNENBURG
“It was a great play.” “I set a screen for him, he came off hard and made a great pass to me. He drew both defenders, and I had a wide-open layup.”
-- D.J. Guillette, LUNENBURG
“We were a lot more ready this game.” “We went out and executed well.”
-- D.J. Guillette, LUNENBURG
“Our defense just wasn’t there down the stretch.”
--Mike Clearly, WEST BOYLSTON
“We knew they were a little bit undersized, and we knew if we wanted to win, we had to focus on the offensive and defensive boards, and that’s what we worked on all week,”
--Doug Roberge, BMR
“It was really important to get the win and move forward.”
-- Ben Bickford, SUTTON
“That’s kind of my thing.” “Everybody jokes about me setting up in the corner and shooting 3s, but it came in handy today.”
-- Nick Kania, SUTTON
“We wanted to limit them to just one shot and done, we did a good job of cleaning up the glass,” said Blackstone-Millville coach Ethan Roe, who also praised Tyler Plante and Jason Duffy for their work guarding Maynard’s Mike Fowler. “Cody stepped up and had one of his best games of the year, he was aggressive early and hit his 3s.”
--Ethan Roe, BMR COACH
“When you go out and try to stop one, you’re going to leave the other one,” Howes said. “Fournier had some good looks and took advantage of them. We knew he could make them, but you have to pick your poison.”
--Paul Howes, MAYNARD COACH
“It gave us problems,” coach Dan Spring said after his eighth-seeded Woolies fell to 11-9. “We just didn’t run our man-to-man press-break all the way through. We didn’t play with poise and we didn’t play with control.”
- Dan Spring, MILLBURY COACH
Sutton coach Jim Donnelly was obviously pleased with the way the press broke the Woolies’ backs. But he was equally elated with the way his players took care of the ball during the decisive opening stanza.
“That was awesome,” Donnelly said. “That’s seniors being seniors. Taking over and really valuing the ball.”
“It was really important to get the win and move forward,” said guard Ben Bickford, who scored 17 points and helped limit Millbury standout junior guard Ryan O’Leary to nine — or 11 less than he had in Round 1.
-- Jim Donnelly, SUTTON COACH
The Clark High School Tournament web site is maintained by Tournament Director Joe Brady (Head Women's Soccer Coach). For more information or comments, please contact Joe Brady at (508) 421-3796 or by email at jbrady@clarku.edu
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View the 2009 Bracket
2010 Clark High School Tournament Bracket will be announced on February 4, 2010 - 7:30 pm
 2010 Clark High School Tournament Semifinals and Finals Live on Charter TV3
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THEY SAID IT - 2009 Quotes |
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2010 Clark HS Tournament Ticket Prices Per Session
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Grades K - 6 - $1.00
Grades 7-12 &
Senior Citizens -$3.00
Adults - $5.00
All-Tournament Pass for Adults Only, sold for the first two days - $20.00
Only Clark Tournament and MIAA Passes (with sign-in) will be accepted for admittance
Doors will open 30 minutes before
game time |
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