Postgame Quotes
Feb. 9, 2011
Recap | Final Stats | Notes |
Postgame Quotes
Kansas 86, Iowa Stare 85
February 9, 2011
Head Coach Bonnie Henrickson
On her team’s performance in the final seconds of overtime:
“I think we found some of the resolve and resiliency we’ve been looking for and have been struggling to find. It took us the last seven seconds in overtime to find it. It was a great special situation late game defensive play. (Kelsey) Bolte is a 90-percent free throw shooter and we’ve worked on all year trying to double-team to trying not to let the best shooter get it. Our first goal is to get a five second count, second goal is to force a turnover, and our third goal is to try and foul someone other than the person they want to shoot the free throw. Marisha (Brown) and Monica (Engelman) did a great job of doubling (Kelsey) Bolte and Angel (Goodrich) did a great job of knocking it off her leg to give us a chance.”
On the importance of the win for the team’s confidence:
“We needed it a lot, absolutely. We needed the one the other night too, but to be able to hang on when it gets tough is great. I could tell they were dropping their shoulders a little bit and I told them, ‘It’s not over; let’s see if we can get a turnover, but if we don’t let’s foul.’ And we still had a lot of time to come back, seven seconds is a long time.”
On what KU’s mindset was going into the overtime:
“We always say overtime is our time and how we need to be aggressive and keep attacking. I thought Monica was going east and west too much and not going north to south, I told her she needed to attack the rim more. We just talked about how we needed to keep going inside and do a better job of communicating some of the plays they were running for Bolte.”
On how her team has improved over the past few games:
“I think we’ve played with a lot of confidence. As we’ve gone through this stretch, even in the Texas game, I told them we have to rebound defensively better and we have to score better in transition. Let’s just fix those things. It’s all about, here’s what we’re doing really well and now let’s work on and fix these little things. Every loss we’ve focused on what we’ve done well but if we can fix some things we’re going to have a chance. The kids have responded and when you’re going through a stretch when you’re struggling to win that’s the approve you have to take.”
Sophomore Center Carolyn Davis
On the win against Iowa State:
“We just needed a win in general and getting a win at home is the icing on the cake. I think that is going to big a big confidence builder for us and I know we are going to Texas A&M and we are going to come focused and ready to play like tonight.”
On her finish in overtime:
“We knew coming in that both of their big post players were out of the game. The team knew that we needed to get the ball inside, whether it was me or Aishah (Sutherland). I wanted the ball and the guards told me that they were throwing the ball inside to me.”
On her struggle from the free-throw line:
“This whole game I was struggling from the free-throw line. I just had a lot of control over my emotions today and I am happy that I was able to stay focused and composed this game.”
Sophomore Guard Monica Engelman
On Carolyn Davis:
“You can throw any type of pass into Carolyn. She is very mobile; she can finish around the rim and shoot the little jumper.”
On the team’s response to being in overtime:
“I think that when you are dealing with adversity you do not give up but you have to push back. I think that we as a team came together and told each other that we were not going to lose this game, but we were going to stick it out and push through to get the win.”
On the team’s response in the second half:
“You cannot take time off or possessions off; you have to face adversity and bounce back.”
Sophomore Guard Angel Goodrich
On her 15 assists against Iowa State:
“I think just being able to run helped a lot and being able to push the tempo in transition on a miss and a make.”
On the win against Iowa State:
“We have been in this position a lot and to pull out a win against a ranked team gives us a lot of momentum going into our next game. We just have to come into practice ready to go and ready to be as dialed in as we were against Iowa State.”
On the last play to Carolyn Davis:
“It was very easy to get the ball in because the posts were a little bit smaller. I was able to see Carolyn and get her the ball and let her go to work.”
Head Coach Bill Fennelly
On what was supposed to happen at the end:
“We were supposed to catch the ball. We knew they would double team (Kelsey) Bolte and they did. We work on that all the time. We set a screen, and we need to catch the ball. We put Kelsey in the game because she’s a better free throw shooter. The ball is in your hands and you’ve got to catch it. We didn’t catch it and the ball went out of bounds. We were running out of players in the post because they fouled our whole team out basically, so that’s what happened.”
On getting back in the game in the second half:
“I think the biggest thing is we quit turning the ball over. We had 11 turnovers at halftime. Seven of those had nothing to do with the team we were playing. We had three second calls; we dribbled the ball out of bounds, things like that. Second half we took care of the ball; we got some good looks at the basket. We really tried hard to get to the free throw line a little bit more. We got the game into overtime and overtime’s are usually back and forth. Both teams had chances to win it but KU made one more play than we did.”
Senior Guard Kelsey Bolte
On losing in overtime:
“It hurts to lose any way, but we definitely thought that we were going to be able to get the ball in bounds and they were going to have to foul us or something. But that definitely wasn’t what we planned.”
On tying the game at the end of the second half:
“After we tied it, we knew we had a chance. We just had to get a couple stops but we just weren’t able to do that. We played well, but we couldn’t execute at the end.”
On what the team can take from this game:
“We’ve got to play hard the whole game. We can’t get ourselves into a big hole in the first half. This has happened to us a couple of times, where we get ourselves into a big hole in the first half and we can’t get ourselves back out.”
Freshman Guard Hallie Christofferson
On the team’s game plan in the second half:
“There’s always going to be a lot of pressure, so we just tried to relax and come together as a team and just focus on the basic things that we need to do to get things done.”
On guarding Carolyn Davis:
“She’s so strong in the post and she has a lot of length to her. You’ve got to move your feet because she’s got a lot of counter moves.”
