Postgame Quotes

Dec. 3, 2009

Recap | Final Stats |

LAWRENCE, Kan. –

Postgame Quotes

Kansas 54, UCLA 49

Dec. 3, 2009

Kansas Head Coach Bonnie Henrickson

On the game:

“Well, about the only goal we accomplished was to play poorly and win. We weren’t able to do that in the Bahamas and not very much last year. Our first shot defense was good and our first shot field goal percentage defense was good, but we had a lot of kids standing and watching kids chase it. They’re probably not going to beat people on the first shot most nights, its going to be the second or third shot, for it not to look like that we need to be better on the boards. Danielle struggled with turning and throwing it away but if she doesn’t fight through that screen like crazy on the shooter, if she doesn’t fight like her life depended on it, that’s not an illegal screen. It was, because Danielle was fighting and the girl took one more step to try to get a piece of her. I happened to be staring right at Danielle because I saw the kid coming off a double staggered screen. Ugly, but it’s a win.”

On the slow start of the offense:

“Well, what they really did in the second half is as soon as we would call a particular man offense and they would go to a zone. That got us, we kind of started standing around a little bit. Then we started calling man offenses and running zone offenses, and we’ve never done that before. Angel wasn’t used to it and Aishah wasn’t used to it, I think upperclassmen were pretty good at it. Their press bothered us. What really bothered us in the first half early was when we took quick shots. They were rushed shots and ill-advised shots, we didn’t have anybody in the glass. Then we just never found rhythm, just never got into a rhythm offensively whether it was a zone or man. When we rebounded the ball the second half and got a defensive rebound, because they send five to the boards, that’s when we got a run out to a pass over the top to Sade for an and-one, and Danielle gets a kick out three, we find Krysten in the lane. They send everybody, so it was everybody trying to come back and we needed more opportunities, we needed more defensive rebounds to convert and go in transition in the second half and that would have been our best offense. But honestly, we just didn’t get enough possessions.

On Danielle playing 28 minutes and taking only 5 shots:

“Well, she turned it over a couple times trying to play somebody one-on-one so she would have had a couple more. They did a good job of confusing people. But some of that is when we get is to Krysten, she made a great extra pass to Krysten through the lane. She did tried to force things early and that didn’t work for her but that’s probably not going to happen much. It’s not good that it happened, but I thought she tried to make the extra pass in the second half and got herself in foul trouble in the first half.”

Kansas Player Quotes

Senior Guard Danielle McCray

On Kansas’ overall performance:

“We played poorly and won. We struggled the whole game. Me, Sade and Angel were in foul trouble, but we found a way to win. It was tough for us the whole game. Their defense is tough. They did a good job of being on us and changing up their defense the whole time. They’re also a really good team at boxing out. I just think we didn’t take the time to turn and box-out our man. Everyone on their team went to the boards, and we didn’t stick our man for that.”

Freshman Guard Monica Engelman

On getting a win after two losses in The Bahamas:

“It feels great. We’ve been holding our heads down a little bit because of our losses, but we’re feeling strong now.”

On fighting to get more second half minutes:

“I know I need to be better defensively. I think when I can play good defense, she (Kansas Head Coach Bonnie Henrickson) will be able to trust me. She’s been emphasizing this for me, because working offensively is easy for me, but defense is what makes great players.”

On getting three first half rebounds:

“You have to choose to do that. That’s what they make us work on in practice. If you go to the boards, good things happen.”

Senior Guard Sade Morris

On recovering from the losses in The Bahamas:

“We know we made some mistakes in The Bahamas, but we kept telling each other, ‘What happened in The Bahamas stays in The Bahamas.’ That’s how we need to keep it. It’s a new day, new week and new game. We came in here and played some defense and that helped us get the win tonight.”

On the toughness of the game:

“Games are never easy. We don’t want easy games because then that makes us complacent. We want to have tough games every day, nothing easy.”

UCLA Head Coach Nikki Caldwell

On the late intentional call against her team:

“I didn’t get the intentional. It was one of my players. She grabbed one of their players so they called the intentional foul, but down the stretch my frustration did show. We’re going to go back and look at film, but the game cannot come down to one play and that’s what I told our team. It came down to a lot of possessions where we didn’t execute on the offensive end. We had several opportunities to win this basketball game. I thought Kansas did a phenomenal job of making a basket when they needed one. Big time players step up in big time games. The three-ball hurt us. We’ll learn from this and we’ll move forward.”

On how UCLA tried to slow down Kansas’ offense:

“We’re a team that plays a lot of different defensive looks for 94 feet. We wanted to mix up how we play. We also mix up our half court defense a lot. At times it’s been confusing for our kids so I know if it’s confusing for us; it’s probably confusing for the other team. We try to keep an imbalance there where no one is really comfortable running their offensive plays.”

On UCLA’s full court pressure:

“We have to. We’re not a big team. I don’t want to rely on us being a half court team that has to give them a full 30 [second shot clock]. I want you late in the clock, 15, 16 seconds, before you start your offense. Then immediately we can change up within that 16 seconds as well keeping them off balance and eating up the clock. We like to run a delay, disrupt, tight full court pressure. It’s worked to our advantage.”