Matthew Owens to call Tide vs. Lady Vols for USRN

On Monday night, Matthew Owens will have the call between Alabama's Softball team vs. Tennessee's Lady Vol's Softball team for the Ultimate Sports Radio Network (USRN) on Mixlr starting at 7pm ET.

UT is ranked No. 16 in the NFCA Coaches' Poll, No. 14 the USA Softball Top 25 & No. 11 in the RPI. The Vols’ 16-game win streak is the second longest current streak in Division I behind Arizona. Tennessee has lost three straight to Alabama but has won the past two meetings in Knoxville. The Vols have swept their past three weekend series’ and earned their  rst SEC road sweep since 2015 last weekend at No. 20 Kentucky. UT is 9-3 vs. ranked foes this season with eight straight wins against ranked opponents.

Last weekend, Alabama won two out of three games against eighth-ranked LSU in Tuscaloosa before defeating UAB, 8-0, on Tuesday. Alabama is now 35-7 overall and 10-5 in SEC play. The Crimson Tide leads the SEC in strikeouts (384), is second in walks (191) and opposing batting average (.165) and third in ERA (1.46), wins (36), hits allowed (165) and  elding percentage (.976). In conference-only games, Alabama is ranked second in hits (97), batters struck out (101) and wins (10) and is third in runs scored (63), total bases (135), walks (52) and opposing batting average (.214).

Redemption: Tar Heels take title over Gonzaga in ugly game

By EDDIE PELLS
Associated Press

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) It's OK, Carolina, you can open your eyes.

An unwatchable game turned into a beautiful night for the Tar Heels, who turned a free-throw contest into a championship they've been waiting an entire year to celebrate.

Justin Jackson delivered the go-ahead 3-point play with 1:40 left Monday and North Carolina pulled away for a 71-65 win over Gonzaga that washed away a year's worth of heartache.

It was, in North Carolina's words, a redemption tour - filled with extra time on the practice court and the weight room, all fueled by a devastating loss in last year's title game on Kris Jenkins' 3-point dagger at the buzzer for Villanova.

"Just unreal that we get a second chance at this," junior Theo Pinson said, recounting a pre-game conversation with teammate Joel Berry II. "Not a lot of people can say they can do that. I told him, `We're about to take this thing. I'm about to give everything I got.' I knew he would, too, We just didn't want to come up short again."

But to say everything went right for Roy Williams' team at this Final Four would be less than the truth.

The Tar Heels (33-7) followed a terrible-shooting night in the semifinal with an equally ice-cold performance in the final - going 4 for 27 from 3-point land and 26 for 73 overall.

Gonzaga, helped by 8 straight points from Nigel Williams-Goss, took a 2-point lead with 1:52 left, but the next possession was the game-changer.

Jackson took a zinger of a pass under the basket from Pinson and converted the shot, then the ensuing free throw to take the lead for good. Moments later, Williams-Goss twisted an ankle and could not elevate for a jumper that would've given the Bulldogs the lead.

Isaiah Hicks made a basket to push the lead to 3, then Kennedy Meeks, in foul trouble all night (who wasn't?), blocked Williams-Goss' shot and Jackson got a slam on the other end to put some icing on title No. 6 for the Tar Heels.

Williams got his third championship, putting him one ahead of his mentor, Dean Smith, and now behind only John Wooden, Mike Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp.

"I think of Coach Smith, there's no question," Williams said. "I don't think I should be mentioned in the same sentence with him. But we got three because I've got these guys with me and that's all I care about right now - my guys."

Berry recovered from ankle injuries to lead the Tar Heels, but needed 19 shots for his 22 points. Jackson had 16 but went 0 for 9 from 3. Overall, the Tar Heels actually shot a percentage point worse than they did in Saturday night's win over Oregon.

Thank goodness for free throws.

They went 15 for 26 from the line and, in many corners, this game will be remembered for these three men: Michael Stephens, Verne Harris and Mike Eades, the referees who called 27 fouls in the second half, completely busted up the flow of the game and sent Meeks, Gonzaga's 7-footers Przemek Karnowski and Zach Collins, and a host of others to the bench in foul trouble.

The game "featured" 52 free throws. Both teams were in the bonus with 13 minutes left. Somehow, Collins was the only player to foul out.

Most bizarre sequence: With 8:02 left, Berry got called for a foul for (maybe) making contact with Karnowski and stripping the ball from the big man's hands. But as Karnowski was flailing after the ball, he inadvertently grabbed Berry around the neck. After a long delay, the refs called Karnowski for a flagrant foul of his own.

"I'm not going to talk about refs," Karnowski said. "It was just a physical game."

Zags coach Mark Few handled it with class, calling the refs "three of the best officials in the entire country," and insisting they did a fine job.

He might have wanted further review on the scrum with 50 seconds left. The refs were taking heat on social media for calling a held ball, which gave possession to the Tar Heels, on a pile-up underneath the Carolina basket. It set up the Hicks layup to put Carolina ahead by 3. One problem: Meeks' right hand looks to be very much touching out of bounds while he's trying to rip away the ball.

"That was probably on me," Few said. "From my angle, it didn't look like an out of bounds situation or I would have called a review. That's tough to hear."

The Bulldogs (37-2), the Cinderella-turned-Godzilla team from the small school in the West Coast Conference, tried to keep the big picture in mind. Twenty years ago, this sort of run at that sort of place looked virtually impossible. With less than 2 minutes left, they had the lead in the national title game.

"We broke the glass ceiling everyone said we couldn't break," junior forward Johnathan Williams said.

And North Carolina got over a hump that, at times this season, felt like a mountain.

"They wanted redemption," Williams said. "I put it on the locker room up on the board - one of the things we had to be tonight was tough enough. I think this group was tough enough tonight."

NCAA title game: Blue blood vs. new blood

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GLENDALE, Ariz. -- It's the blue blood vs. the new blood.

The contrast in the NCAA Tournament championship game is clear: North Carolina, winners of five titles and appearing in its record 20th Final Four, is in one corner. Gonzaga, in its first Final Four after spending almost two decades chugging up the mountaintop, is in the other.

"To be playing in the last game of the year is just crazy cool," said Bulldogs coach Mark Few.

But make no mistake. The programs might hang different kinds of banners in their arenas, but this is a heavyweight matchup all the way. These are two experienced, balanced, No. 1 seeds ready to throw down Monday at 9:20 p.m. ET from University of Phoenix Stadium.

North Carolina's Roy Williams will be coaching in his 100th NCAA Tournament game and going for his third national title. He has rings from 2005 and 2009, coming up just short of adding the 2016 title to his collection as the Tar Heels lost to Villanova on a last-second shot.

"You know, on game night, kids gotta play. That's the bottom line," Williams said. "I've never won a game from the bench. I may have lost some, but I know I've never won one. We've gotta go out and play and do the best we can."

North Carolina (32-7) won the ACC regular-season title by two games and knocked off a No. 4 seed (Butler), a No. 2 seed (Kentucky) and a No. 3 seed (Oregon on Saturday night) to advance to the title game. The Tar Heels' bona-fides are unquestioned.

Plenty have doubted Gonzaga. The Bulldogs (37-1) have had their doubters because they play in the weaker West Coast Conference, and their last two games in the tournament were against upstarts -- 11th-seeded Xavier and seventh-seeded South Carolina.

"No one's here by accident," said Gonzaga point guard Nigel Williams-Goss. "I think the respect thing has to go out the window. You have 37 wins in a college season, I mean that's just unbelievable. And to be playing the last game of the season, we have a chance to play for it all. And we're here to win it."

Williams-Goss is the engine of a Gonzaga attack that shoots 50.8 percent from the field, second-best in the country. His 16.9 scoring average leads five Bulldogs in double figures.

Senior center Przemek Karnowski is a load inside at 7-foot-1 and 300 pounds, while freshman 7-footer Zach Collins is a future first-round NBA draft choice. He had 14 points against the Gamecocks, setting career highs with 13 rebounds and six blocked shots.

They will be matched up, in part, against North Carolina's sturdy man in the middle, senior Kennedy Meeks. He is not often called upon to be a leading scorer, but when the Tar Heels went cold against Oregon, Meeks dominated with 25 points on 11-of-13 shooting. He added 14 rebounds, eight on the offensive glass.

North Carolina leads the country in rebounding margin and offensive rebounds.

"I think our main objective every game is to hit teams early in the mouth, whether that's attacking them on the offensive end or playing great defense," Meeks said.

Forward Justin Jackson averages a team-best 18.3 points. Point guard Joel Berry II, averaging 14.5 points per game, has been dealing with two balky ankles. He played 35 minutes Saturday night but was just 2 of 14 from the field.

Can he guard Williams-Goss?

Will the Tar Heels assert their usual dominance in the paint?

Will Jackson go off?

Can Gonzaga 3-point ace Jordan Mathews be a shooting star?

Will the last team standing be blue blood or new blood?

For North Carolina, it's more of the same. For Gonzaga, the peak has never been closer.

"I've had some really, really tough teams. I've had some really close teams. I've had some teams that have been crazy efficient on the offensive end and ones that have been pretty darned good on the defensive end that probably didn't get credit for it," Few said. "These guys are all of that. All of it."

Meeks shoots, and rebounds, and saves the day for Tar Heels

By EDDIE PELLS
AP National Writer

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) North Carolina missed the shots. No surprise there.

Kennedy Meeks saved the game. No surprise there, either.

Meeks, the only Tar Heel who could shoot straight Saturday night, muscled away the game-saving offensive rebound in a 77-76 victory over Oregon after ice-cold Carolina missed its fourth straight free throw down the stretch.

All part of a career night for the North Carolina senior, who was on the bench in last year's championship game when Villanova devastatingly ended the Tar Heels' chance at a title with a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

In this one, Meeks was front and center. He finished 11 for 13 to match his career high with 25 points. And he had 14 rebounds, eight of which came on the offensive glass and none of which was more important than the last. It secured a Monday-night date with Gonzaga in the title game, where the Tar Heels (32-7) will go for the program's sixth title.

"If it wasn't for Kennedy Meeks, we wouldn't have been in the basketball game," Carolina coach Roy Williams said.

Meeks had plenty to mop up for.

The rest of his team shot a brick-a-minute 14 for 55 from the floor (25 percent). Justin Jackson was one of the few to break through. He had 22 points on 6-for-13 shooting, including a five-minute stretch with three 3-pointers and two free throws that helped the Heels to a double-digit lead and put them on the verge of a runaway midway through the second half.

Given the lead and Oregon's own awful shooting (37 percent), losing this one might have felt every bit as bad as the Villanova loss last year. This is, after all, a team on a mission with only one acceptable destination.

"I just didn't want to lose another game off a winning shot," said Joel Berry II, who missed the free throw that Meeks tore away from Jordan Bell to ice the game. "I wish we would have closed it out."

Didn't quite happen. And after Keith Smith's layup pulled Oregon within 77-76 with 7 seconds left (should Oregon have pulled it out for a game-tying 3? Maybe so), it looked like it would come down to free throws.

It did, and it wasn't pretty.

First, Meeks got fouled, stepped to the line and rimmed out two. But Theo Pinson got inside and batted the ball back out to Berry, who then got fouled with 4 seconds left and took his turn at the line.

Berry missed both, too. But Meeks got inside of Bell for that final rebound, threw it outside to Pinson, who dribbled out the clock to end this ugly affair.

"My main focus was, if Joel missed the second free throw, to hit the offensive glass hard," Meeks said.

Bell finished with 13 points and 16 rebounds, but needed No. 17 to give the Ducks a last shot.

"Jordan felt terrible," Oregon coach Dana Altman said. "But I told him, `Buddy, you got 16 rebounds, we wouldn't have been in this position if it hadn't been for you.'"

That it came down to Carolina winning on the boards was no big surprise. This was the best rebounding team in the country this season, grabbing an average of 13 more boards than their opponents over the course of the season.

Against the Ducks, the rebounding battle was even (43 each), though North Carolina got five more on the offensive glass, which resulted in 19 second-chance points, 10 more shots and, eventually, the win.

"I think coach, definitely, when we're gone, he's going to tell that story," said Pinson, who finished with eight points and eight boards. "That just shows how big offensive rebounding is. Boxing out at the end of the game. I'm sure (Bell) wished he'd boxed out right there."

ANKLE TROUBLE: Berry played, as promised, but his shot was troubled by the injured ankles that limited him in practice all week. He was 2 for 14 from the floor and 5 for 9 from the line and finished with 11 points.

MR. MARCH: Tyler Dorsey had been lighting it up through the tournament for Oregon, shooting 65 percent from 3, but the Tar Heels got in his face early and he never got on track. His 21 points came on 11 shots from the field and he only went 3 for 7 from behind the arc. Oregon shot 3 for 18 from 3 in the second half.

BROOKS STRUGGLES: Dillon Brooks has been the leader for Oregon all season, but struggled, finishing with 10 points on 2-for-11 shooting before fouling out.

GOOD COMPANY: According to ESPN Stats and Info, Meeks joins Larry Bird, Ed O'Bannon, Carmelo Anthony and Danny Manning as the only players to reach 25 points and 14 rebounds in the Final Four over the last 40 years.

NEXT UP: Carolina vs. Gonzaga in the title game Monday. Ducks' season over after falling a game short of returning to the title game for the first time since 1939, the first NCAA Tournament.

Gonzaga makes first NCAA title game with win over S Carolina

By JIM O'CONNELL
AP Basketball Writer

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) Their star guard was outstanding. Their big men dominated inside. Still, it came down to some last-second strategy for Gonzaga to move on to the NCAA Tournament championship game for the first time.

Nigel Williams-Goss scored 23 points, Gonzaga's big men combined for 27 and the Bulldogs kept South Carolina from taking a game-tying shot in a 77-73 victory Saturday night in a matchup of first-time teams at the Final Four.

"Just an awesome, awesome basketball game, with just how hard both teams competed," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. "It took everything we had to hold them off and come back."

The Bulldogs' 7-footers, senior Przemek Karnowski and freshman Zach Collins, took care of things on both ends of the court, combining for 18 rebounds. Collins also had a career-high six blocks.

"That's my job is to go in and rim protect," said Collins, who had 14 points and 13 rebounds. "I had four fouls today. But I thought, you know, getting those blocked shots would help us."

Gonzaga (37-1), the top seed in the West Regional, will face North Carolina, the top seed in the South, for the title on Monday night.

"To be playing the last game of the year, that's crazy cool," Few said.

Williams-Goss missed a shot with 12.7 seconds left and South Carolina rebounded and called a timeout, trailing 75-72. South Carolina passed the ball around and Gonzaga fouled Sindarius Thornwell before he could shoot with 3.5 seconds left. Thornwell made the first free throw and missed the second on purpose in hopes of his teammates grabbing an offensive rebound. Killian Tillie rebounded for Gonzaga, was fouled and made two free throws to cement the game.

"We had been practicing it all year and we always want to foul under 6 (seconds)," Few said. "Josh Perkins did a job being really patient and not fouling on the shot. The second part is you've got to get the rebound, and that's what's been difficult for us at times. They executed great."

Thornwell said the idea was to get in position for one last quick shot.

"The plan was to miss it left and hopefully Chris (Silva) could tap it out to somebody," he said.

Williams-Goss, a second-team All-American, led the Bulldogs to a 14-point lead in the second half but it disappeared quickly as the Gamecocks (26-11) went on a 14-point run to grab a 67-65 lead with about 7 minutes to play.

"When things got tough we banded together and pulled through," said Williams-Goss, who had six assists and a brief injury scare after turning an ankle underneath the basket.

"There was no way I was going to come out of the game. This is the last two games of the season," Williams-Goss said. "Now we're 40 minutes from a championship."

Collins and Karnowksi then accounted for the next 7 points, including a 3-pointer by Collins and a thundering dunk by Karnowski.

South Carolina still wasn't done. The seventh-seeded Gamecocks scored 5 straight to get within 74-72 with just over 2 minutes left.

"Since the beginning of the season that's what we worked for, moments like this," Silva said. "And we try to do our best to respond the way we learn how to respond."

PJ Dozier led the Gamecocks with 17 points and Thornwell, the leading scorer in the NCAA Tournament at 25.8 points per game during the first four rounds, finished with 15 on 4-for-12 shooting after starting slow.

"They just crowd the paint," Thornwell said. "They forced me to pass it out on my drives. And just protecting the rim real well."

Karnowski went down on the court in the first half after being poked in the right eye as he took a shot underneath the basket. He left for the last 5 minutes of the half, but Collins picked him up, finishing with 8 points at halftime.

"I got blocked but he just put the finger in my eye," Karnowski said. "I had blurry vision, a little bit shadow. I couldn't really open it."

"Throughout the whole second half it was getting better and better," he said.

BIG PICTURE

South Carolina: The Gamecocks entered the tournament having last won a game in 1973. They had four wins to reach the Final Four, including victories over the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 seeds in the East region.

Gonzaga: The Bulldogs now have a chance to play for a title after already getting further than ever before in the NCAA Tournament. Gonzaga had made three Elite Eights without advancing to the Final Four.

BLOCK PARTY

The teams combined for 14 blocked shots, eight by Gonzaga. Collins had six and Silas Melson had two for the Bulldogs. Silva had three for the Gamecocks, while Thornwell had two and Dozier had one.

THREES ABOUND

Gonzaga, which had a school-record 12 3-pointers in the regional final win over Xavier, went 9 for 19 from beyond the arc Saturday. Jordan Mathews was 4 for 8 while Williams-Goss and Melson had two each and Collins had one.

NUMBERS

Silva had 13 rebounds for the Gamecocks. ... South Carolina shot 37.9 percent (25 of 66) for the game while the Bulldogs were 29 of 60 (48.3 percent). ... Gonzaga committed 12 turnovers and the Gamecocks had just five.

UP NEXT

Gonzaga meets North Carolina for the national championship on Monday night.

Surprising Oregon faces old-school UNC in Final Four

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North Carolina is the best rebounding team in the country. Oregon is down a big guy.

The Tar Heels reek of old-school. They are the only blue-blood in the Final Four. They have an old-school coach in Roy Williams. They have an old-school, low-post big man in Kennedy Meeks, who dominated Kentucky in the South Regional final, grabbing 17 rebounds and blocking four shots.

North Carolina (31-7) has a national-best rebounding margin of plus-13 per game. And the Tar Heels are rebounding nearly 42 percent of their missed shots entering Saturday's game in Glendale, Ariz., tipping off at 8:49 p.m. ET.

"We feel like it's extremely important to get the other team in foul trouble," Williams said. "The biggest way to get their big guys in foul trouble is to go inside. That's something that's been important for us ever since I started coaching, and I still believe that. And Kennedy does a great job rebounding the basketball. ...

"I do think you have to have some guys that can make 3-point shots. But I've seen very few teams win the NCAA championship just shooting threes, because everybody's got somebody inside that can give you a little balance."

Oregon (33-5) provides a contrast. It is a good rebounding team, too, although not like North Carolina. The Ducks do it more through athleticism and effort, especially after losing shot-blocking stretch-forward Chris Boucher to a torn ACL in the Pac-12 tournament.

The Ducks, playing in their first Final Four since winning the inaugural NCAA Tournament in 1939, often play with 6-foot-7 wing Dillon Brooks at power forward next to active 6-9 center Jordan Bell.

Bell had 11 points, 13 rebounds and eight blocks in a 74-60 takedown of overall No. 1 seed Kansas in an Elite Eight game in Kansas City, Mo.

"I can't overemphasize Jordan controlling the paint in the first 10 minutes of the game and just putting a thought in their mind that they were not going to get easy baskets," Ducks coach Dana Altman said.

While many wrote off Oregon after the Boucher injury, the Ducks got hot behind a tight rotation that is not going much past six players.

Sophomore guard Tyler Dorsey has scored at least 20 points in seven consecutive games. He made 25 of 40 3-point shots in the past six games.

Bell, the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, has double-digit rebounds in six straight games. Hardly anyone plays harder than Brooks, the Pac-12 Player of the Year who is averaging 16.3 points per game.

"I think all the guys have picked it up a little bit, just knowing that Chris isn't there," Altman said. "But we will have our work cut out for us on Saturday. North Carolina is probably the best rebounding team that we faced all year. They score pretty good on the first shot, but their offensive rebounding numbers are off the charts."

Much of the focus before Saturday will be on the health of North Carolina point guard Joel Berry II, who is dealing with two balky ankles.

"Hopefully by the time we get to Thursday or Friday, he'll be able to do some things in practice," Williams said, "but I'm scared to death right now because I don't know."

The Tar Heels have been led all season by All-America wing Justin Jackson, who is averaging 18.2 points per game and shooting 38 percent from 3-point range (101 of 266). Berry is averaging 14.6 points, Meeks is at 12.3, and forward Isaiah Hicks scores 12.1 per game.

Forward Luke Maye came off the bench to average 16.5 points and 7.5 rebounds in two games in the South regional in Memphis. His jumper with 0.3 seconds left beat Kentucky 75-73.

North Carolina, which was the top seed in the South, is in the Final Four for the second consecutive season, having lost in the 2016 final when Villanova's Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer. The Ducks, the No. 3 seed in the Midwest, have taken a step further than last season, when they lost in the Elite Eight.

"This is a bigger stage," Altman said. "Our guys are aware of that."

Role reversal: Gonzaga to face underdog South Carolina

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Gonzaga, often cast as the gutty underdog, finally finished the climb to its first Final Four, doing so as a No. 1 seed. The Bulldogs' reward: playing a gutty underdog.

South Carolina, which advanced to the Final Four as a seventh seed in the East, is hardly a Cinderella, coming from the Southeastern Conference. But the Gamecocks seemed more like bracket-filler than bracket-buster when they lost five of their last seven games before the NCAA Tournament.

The combination of high-scoring senior guard Sindarius Thornwell and some hellacious wear-you-down defense has been more than good enough in the past two weeks, however, as South Carolina knocked off the No. 2 (Duke), No. 3 (Baylor) and No. 4 (Florida) seeds in the East.

The Gamecocks, like Gonzaga, will be appearing in their first Final Four when the game tips off Saturday at 6:09 p.m. ET in Glendale, Ariz.

"We're defending at a high clip again, which is allowing us to get out in the open court and get opportunities," South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. "And our inside play has gotten good again. It kind of disappeared on us there the last month of the season. But our inside guys have played well in the NCAA Tournament."

The Gamecocks (26-10) will need that against a big Gonzaga frontline that features 7-foot, 300-pound Przemek Karnowski, blue-chip 7-foot freshman Zach Collins and 6-9 forward Johnathan Williams. The player who really makes the Zags go, though, is Washington transfer point guard Nigel Williams-Goss, who was selected to the 10-man Wooden Award All-America team.

Williams-Goss had 23 points, eight rebounds and four assists as Gonzaga blew out Xavier 83-59 in the West Regional final, showing the offensive and defensive efficiency that have been season-long hallmarks. Critics might have doubted the Bulldogs' level of competition in the West Coast Conference, but Gonzaga showed steel in surviving the defensive pressure of fourth-seeded West Virginia in the Sweet 16.

Williams-Goss, Williams (a transfer from Missouri) and Cal transfer guard Jordan Mathews have helped transform Gonzaga (36-1) into a more dangerous, more athletic team.

"It was no secret that we were coming in here to do something as a collective unit," Williams-Goss said. "If we wanted to do things individually, we would have just stayed where we were at."

The best player on the court might be Thornwell, the SEC Player of the Year. He is averaging 25.8 points in the NCAA Tournament, scoring at least 24 in each outing.

"His kind of whole package is very dangerous," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. "Just kind of the intensity that he brings to the game. He can hurt you on the glass. He can hurt you shooting it. He can hurt you off the bounce. He gets to the free throw line a lot. Yeah, he's definitely going to be a handful."

South Carolina can't be counted on to hit from 3-point range (33.7 percent for the season), but the Gamecocks allow just 29.8 percent from behind the arc.

They have forced an average of 17 turnovers in four NCAA Tournament games, outscoring every team in the second half by an average of 13.5 points. They unleashed a 65-point second half against Duke.

That defense will put a lot of pressure on Williams-Goss, who averages a team-high 16.7 points as well as 4.6 assists. Karnowski averages 12.2 points in a balanced scoring effort.

Martin counters inside with 6-9 Chris Silva and 6-10 freshman post Maik Kotsar, who has been playing well, including hitting a late mid-range jumper that was key to holding off Florida.

"We play in the SEC," Martin said Tuesday. "I understand some of you guys never watch us play, but, my god, anyone see Alabama play? They were big. Anyone see LSU? They were big.

"If we were one of those smaller mid-major schools, this is where you start kind of worrying if can you handle size. ... Our team has been exposed to everything: size, athleticism, winning, losing, good, bad, suspensions. Those kids have not thrown in the towel or blinked one time all year."