Hatchet on Lonergan: pushing the team to focus and get better

The Hatchet has a really good article about Coach Mike Lonergan working to get the team focused on basketball and get tough. Published before the team's nice win over Davidson, it's got some choice quotes from the coach on those two issues, both of which Lonergan has talked a lot about this year. 
“I said, ‘I just need you guys to really look in the mirror and seize this opportunity,’” Lonergan said. “We worked so hard: Seton Hall, Penn State, Rutgers, Virginia, Tennessee. We got a lot of quality wins and we’ve got the opportunity to get more. But our seniors, for them, I just told them, ‘You’ve got the rest of your life. You don’t want to have any regrets when you’re my age.’”

...
“We’re good enough, our top five to seven. We should be playing at a higher level, and to me it’s concentration and focus,” Lonergan said. “You’ve got the rest of your life to worry about girlfriends and different things.”

“I’m tired of the cell phones and all this stuff. We’ve got to be focused, man. We’ve got to play team defense," he added. "We’ve been playing with each other for four years, some guys, and we want to take this thing to the next level. I love our team, but I don’t think they realize that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and these next three, four weeks are very important.”
The coach also talks about beating good teams but losing to bad ones, like Saint Louis and DePaul, and says he believes the team should make the NCAAs.

It's actually all pretty inspirational stuff, almost from a movie, and it works out. It's worth reading.

This Saturday's game in Richmond against VCU will be a big one -- if the good guys can win, it'll help their chances significantly. As noted in the recap, the team is on the bubble -- Jerry Palm has GW as one of the First Four play-in games.

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