New London — This is a day to rejoice for all the anti-Whalers, perhaps the unfortunates over the years who have been on the butt end of such butt whippings, authored by the green and gold. But today? They revel. In this:

Class L quarterfinals Tuesday night at Cannamela Field: Notre Dame 44, New London 7.

Whalers: didn't get a first down until three minutes remained.

Whalers: lost their last two games, to NFA and in the playoffs, thus finishing 9-2. In the only city around that can make 9-2 feel like ... eh ... the '62 Mets.

And now for the rest of the story.

This was maybe 10 minutes after the game. And Juan Roman, New London's coach, began to speak. His poise, passion and utter decency in the wake of disappointment — how would you feel if everything you've worked for over the last few months became a dumpster fire in one night? — prompted the following question:

How much better would sports be in this corner of the world if Juan Roman got to coach all of them?

You are about to read his postgame streams of consciousness. Read them slowly and appreciate them. And ask if you could possibly conceive of a better man leading the kids of this city:

"You know what? You reap what you sow," Roman began. "I'm not going to stand here and say we did everything right and we deserved to win. Sometimes you don't deserve to win. I know people might not like hearing that and it might not be fashionable. But if we want to be the team that we want to be, if we're going to be the team that our town wants us to be, we have to be that all the time. In practice, in school, in the community.

"We've got to understand it doesn't just happen on Friday night, or in this case Tuesday night. We've got to go out and earn it. How many guys want to get in the weight room? How many guys want to do the things in the offseason? It's tough. We're in a town with multi-sport athletes, but you've got to find the time.

"Give Notre Dame credit. That was football the way you draw it up. Everyone was saying this is the team you don't want to play. They got after us.

"Is (9-2 record) OK? It's all right as an improvement. But is it ever all right in a town where people want to be champions? In that case 9-2 isn't. But I'm not going to belittle the accomplishments these kids earned. They did go out there and win nine games in a row. If we had lost our first two like Notre Dame did and then run off nine (in a row), the world is great. Timing is everything in life and unfortunately we lost our last two.

"There was no doubt we needed  to change the culture. First of all, I won't say I changed anything. We came out here as a coaching staff and players for the most part bought in. But unfortunately like the old saying 'it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil,' we probably had six kids that didn't buy in. Like anything else, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Walking off the field. When you have an attitude. When you are selfish.

"I told them certain things going into this game. It's going to be chippy. They're going to say this, they're going to say that. And for us to allow ourselves to fall into that trap is terrible. That disappoints me more than anything else. For us to buy into it ... it's hard for us to get rid of this machismo. One thing I wanted for this team is coming together and being focused and we didn't have that. We had fragments at times instead of doing what's right for the team."

That lasted four minutes, 18 seconds. Again: in the wake of a hideous loss in the driving rain and wind and was hardly how a home playoff game gets envisioned.

The right man is here for the right job. His culture is back. He teaches the right things. Scoreboard be damned.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro