Nov. 13, 2006

Recap | Box Score

UIC HEAD COACH John Trask

On playing the match a day later due to storms:
"First of all I'd like to thank the NCAA and [NCAA site representative] Chad [Hawley] and everybody involved in the event. Obviously it was a tough day yesterday and I thought for the good of the game of soccer it was nice that we delayed it 24 hours. I think all of the participants for both schools were much happier to be able to come back here and play a proper game and have a fair outcome."

On Western Illinois:
"I'd also like to compliment [Western Illinois head coach] Eric Johnson and his staff and his team. I thought Western Illinois was a tremendous team. I'd only seen them on tape once and I knew they were good. They were every bit as good as we expected. Hats off to Western Illinois University and their team and coaches for coming in here and giving us a heck of a battle."

On the UIC defense:
"We're very fortunate. We have a great goalkeeper and we've got some very good senior leadership in the back, and when we have our full complement of defenders we're tough to score on. We've only given up seven goals all season and we've played some very good teams. It's team defending when our midfield's putting the pressure on the ball that they were and then the quality of the individual defending . I thought Pat McMahon did a tremendous job against their forward [Martin Browne]."

On Notre Dame, UIC's second round opponent:
"It's a Big East team. They're an extremely talented team. I've matched up against their coach [Bobby Clarke] when he was at Stanford. He is extremely good, he is extremely intelligent. I'm sure he was here watching us today. It's going to be a tremendous battle in South Bend. We're looking forward to the challenge. They've got a lot of high-level players."