from Steph Greegor of Fox Sports Ohio,

“It comes from everyone,” said (Todd) Richards. “It’s easy in this business to get really negative. It’s real easy. But a quote I live by is ‘Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.’ Losing is hard. It’s hard on everything. But it’s always your attitude and choices the next day on how you’re going to react to it. Are you going to be miserable as a coach? Are you going to be miserable as a player? Or are we going to use last night, what we learned from that, and are we going to use today to get better? I think that’s what everyone did.”

Richards said the players could sense in those one-goal losses just before the hot streak that, even though they were losing, they were about to turn a corner.

“I think they started to sense it, they started to see it, like ‘we’re playing better, we’re just about there,’” said Richards. “And now they’re reaping the benefits of those struggles. To me that’s what makes it more rewarding. Now the big test is: Can we keep this going?”

Richards said, inevitably, something is going to happen. Whether it’s something in a game or an injury or the difficulty of traveling—his team will have to rally. But this is a Coach who isn’t afraid of a challenge—or helping his team work through one.

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