"I don't mind getting poked"

Following up my previous post about the T&G, I won't post the full game story from the men's basketball victory at Northeastern. But there were some quotes too good to pass up. From the Saturday, December 31 edition of the T&G:

“I’ve been on four Holy Cross teams, and I’ve never seen a team that paid so little attention to detail as we did in the second half of that game,” Hamilton said. “And me and (senior co-captain) Kevin Hyland were the biggest culprits. The last two days we punished ourselves. We ran. We did extra conditioning work. We had to punish ourselves after giving that kind of effort.” The Crusaders also made a vow to coach Ralph Willard that they would hold their next opponent to less than 40 percent shooting. George Mason connected on 55 percent of its shots.

Simmons spent yesterday morning in the hospital receiving intravenous fluids. “I don’t mind getting poked,” Simmons said. “(Intravenous fluids) is the approach they’re trying now. I’ve had one before the last three games. Today I felt good.”

Holy Cross had prepared — a lot — for Barea, who is averaging 22.8 points and 9.5 assists. “We were planning for him for the last three days,” Willard said. “We got here and found out he wasn’t playing, and we had to change our whole game plan around. But I’m happy there was no letdown.”

“This is a good step, and I’m proud of our effort,” Willard said. “We still have to get a lot better, but if we can defend like this, it will be a key to the season.”