May 28, 2000

NCAA DIVISION III MEN'S LACROSSE CHAMPIONSHIPS POST-GAME QUOTES

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP - Middlebury vs. Salisbury State

May 28, 2000 - Byrd Stadium (College Park, Md.)

MIDDLEBURY

HEAD COACH ERIN QUINN'S OPENING STATEMENT: "I just want to say congratulations to these guys and congratulations to Salisbury State. We were happy to be back this year. The whole week was a different week for us from last year. Instead of being a little wide-eyed and wondering what happens next, we were a calm, confident group of people. We talked about not worrying about the championship, just worrying about Salisbury."

QUINN ON HIS TEAM'S DEFENSE: "We had a great defensive effort today. We wanted to make them earn their goals. The key for us today was getting back in transition and making them earn their goals. It's easy to stop them once you do that. There are so many match-up problems because they are so balanced and they have so many weapons. They can shoot from outside and they can feed. It was the patience of our guys to understand that they are a great team and they are going to score some goals. Our big effort was to make them earn their goals and not get any easy transition goals."

QUINN ON STOPPING SALISBURY ATTACKMAN JOE HIGH: "It was junior defenseman Brian Nickel's job to not let Joe High score easy goals. A couple of their midfielders scored a few uncontested goals. They do a nice job of knowing teams will try to stop High. We were willing to concede that they were going to take a few shots. Anything High has in his stick five yards away is almost a guaranteed goal."

DAVID SEELEY ON THE GAME: "It was just a great game. Salisbury played really well. We were excited to be back playing against them after last year's championship. Everybody deserved the MVP award. Our defense played awesome. They shut down Salisbury when we needed it to. We got a lot of fast breaks and I thought we finished them well."

HOLT HOPKINS ON THE KEY TO THE GAME: "Overall our whole point throughout the game was not to get flustered, lose control and get behind. We tried to never fall back and always keep hustling and going after balls, and staying within our own game. A lot of times we're not going to have the depth and all the number of individually stick-skill talented players. But we have a lot of hard-nosed players that contest after ground balls and that was important today on a slippery surface. It's a matter of who's going to get to it (the ball) first and who's going to control it."

JED RAYMOND ON THE GAME: "I have a tremendous amount of respect for Salisbury as a team. They're one of the powerhouses in Division III. The reason why we win games like this is because we don't change how we play against anybody. We play everyone the same way. That's what good teams need to do."

SALISBURY

HEAD COACH JIM BERKMAN: "Our No. 1 priority throughout the week was groundball play and we thought the winner of this game would be the winner of the groundball (battle). That was the difference today. They had more possessions, they had a (25-16 groundball advantage) in the second quarter when they made a quick run. They just beat us to the ball. They played extremely hard."

JIM BERKMAN: "This was just a moment in time that we came up a little bit short. But, a 17-2 season, playing in the national championship and coming in second is not so bad. Granted, our goal is to be champions, but on this day it wasn't meant to be. But the sun will come up tomorrow and the Sea Gulls will be back in 2001."

JIM BERKMAN ON THIRD QUARTER: "We came out in the first three or four minutes and we kind of dominated the play, but we came up empty. The first three or four possessions, I think we had about five shots each time and I don't think we got a goal on either of those key possessions. And I think that kind of took some momentum away right there."

SENIOR ATTACKMAN JOE HIGH ON MIDDLEBURY'S 6-1 RUN IN THE SECOND QUARTER: "It definitely gave them momentum. It seemed like everything was going their way for awhile. The ball would just squirt out and pop right into one of their sticks right on the crease. Our goalies can't do anything about that. You really can't blame anybody."