Rotherham manager Steve Evans hailed the heroic goalkeeping performance of Norwich's Declan Rudd in Tuesday night's 2-1 Capital One Cup defeat.
The Millers matched their Premier League visitors for much of the game and created enough chances to have at least sent the game to extra-time.
But a mixture of wayward finishing - Matt Derbyshire missed an open net - and a raft of Rudd saves meant that the Canaries made it into round three thanks to goals from Jonny Howson and Ricky Van Wolfswinkel.
Rudd was in fine form and kept out Jonson Clarke-Harris twice and Emmanuel Ledesma in the first half, but his best work came after the break with a logic-defying double save from Greg Halford and Joe Newell before getting the crowd wowing with a finger-tip stop to deny Derbyshire.
The Millers eventually beat Rudd with Paul Green's low volley, but they could not go on and force an additional period.
Evans said: "It's
hard to accept. It's possibly the best-ever goalkeeping performance I
have seen at the New York in its short life.
"The boy Declan Rudd in
the second half put in some heroic saves.
"It was a fantastic cup tie to watch and I genuinely thought
when we got the goal we would certainly take it to extra
time, but it was not to be.
"But
that's certainly how we want to play, we can lose football matches
every week as long as we give our supporters value for money and we
have done that.
"It
was a real test for us when we were laying siege at their goal and
then they go and make it 2-0 after the boy Rudd has made two heroic
saves in the space of a minute.
"We
got the goal back and the only disappointing thing is that we didn't
go on and equalise, we certainly made enough chances to equalise."
The best of those chances fell to Paul Green when he skewed a free header from Chris Maguire's fine cross.
Evans added: "The
one thing he does do is get on the end of things in the box.
"His
conversion makes it that he misses more than he scores but he
continues to make the runs and that's what we ask him to do. He knows
he should hit the target."
Norwich boss Alex Neil was impressed with the Millers.
He said: "Rotherham gave a real good account of themselves. They worked really hard, they have a direct style of play but it created a few opportunities for them.
"I felt we played well in the game as well, we made a number of changes and I thought the players that came in really acquitted themselves when.
"That comment from Steve doesn't surprise me. Declan was excellent, he had a real good game, I am sure Steve has seen better performances than that, but he was great."
