Postgame Quotes
Dec. 12, 2010
Postgame Quotes
Kansas 79, Alabama 57
December 12, 2010
Head Coach Bonnie Henrickson
Opening Statement:
“I thought there were patches where we got nine jump shots and we didn’t go inside. Then we got everybody in foul trouble, and then we’re scrambling with Monica at the point, and just trying to get into the locker room alive. I will be honest with you, I didn’t care if we scored if we could keep them from scoring, but credit to those guys to just hang on and not panic. We just needed to get in the locker room to regroup and then play really well out of the locker room. We threw a punch and got some separation that they never cut back into the lead. We challenged the kids about how that’s what this league does, you can lose a tough one and then you turn around and you got a good team that you got to be ready to play. You can’t let that linger and I don’t think we did.”
On the speed of play:
“Memphis tried to do that to us, really to Keena (Mays) quite honestly. In the North Dakota State game they never guarded her, and she couldn’t figure that out. Then in less than 24 hours [Memphis] pressed her from the time she touched it, so we told her it’s going to feel like Memphis. You’re not going to be able to go coast-to-coast every single time. It’s going to feel like you can, but be optimistic, run a good half-court offense and when you see you have a little light, then go. I thought in the second half, she was better about picking her spots to do that. She got herself a little flustered because she turned it over on some bad balls early, but that’s going to happen. She has a pretty good feel for when to go and when to pull it back, where as CeCe (Harper) is freight train going to the rim no matter what you do, and we have to get her to pull back.”
On turnovers:
“We just talked about not letting our offense become their offense. If we could get in a half-court offense, we felt like we could take care of the ball, but they would get you before you got it past half-court, because they trap an on-ball screen. I thought we handled the press for the most part pretty well, considering we haven’t seen a press like that the whole time.”
On handling pressure with young guard play:
“I started watching film on the way back from Michigan, and I thought we are going to go through this with two freshman point-guards. We are just going to have to find a way to manage possessions and have some poise. I was concerned with both of those two, but I didn’t think they couldn’t, I was just didn’t know how they would respond. I know they will be aggressive, they keep their dribble and they don’t pick their dribble up, which young kids typically do. We talked about if you get trapped, beat the big; they can’t guard you out in the middle of the floor. Then we started to get some block calls because we stayed aggressive.”
Sophomore Center Carolyn Davis
On turnovers:
“We had a big emphasis in practice on no turnovers. Alabama was forcing teams into 20 to 30 turnovers a game. We knew we couldn’t have turnovers like that because Alabama could get easy buckets. The young guards worked a lot in practice with ball handling and I think that we did good with our turnovers today.”
On the guards handling the press:
“I think the guardS did really good today. We had a few turnovers we shouldn’t HAVE had but we didn’t let them get easy buckets. I think that we have to go into the next game and continue to get better at that.”
On keeping the lead throughout the game:
“It was really important to keep the lead because we knew they were going to press us the entire game. We felt good throughout the game, but we never let up during the game but kept on pushing.”
Junior Forward Aishah Sutherland
On being physical in the game:
“I came into this game knowing they were a physical team, but I knew that I had to be physical back and not back down or get mad.”
On leading by example:
“I like to lead by example more than talking. I am going to keep doing what I’m doing and lead my team by example.”
On coming off the lose to Michigan:
“It was a very big win because it was depressing going to Michigan and being up at the half and then totally letting them come back and beat us. This was big for us because we showed everyone that we are back on track and ready to go.”
Alabama Head Coach Wendell Hudson
Opening comments:
“I thought Kansas played awfully well. When you shoot the ball 58% for the game, you’ve got to be feeling pretty good about the way you’re playing. On the other hand, I thought we shot the ball terrible. It was really the worst shooting game we’ve had. Some of that can be attributed to Kansas’ defense, but I thought we had a lot of wide open looks and we just didn’t make them.”
On getting outscored 48-18 in the paint:
“We did a lot of gambling and they made us pay for gambling. We’re not necessarily a paint team, we’re more of a perimeter basketball team. When we’re not shooting well, we have a different style. But they without question dominated the paint. When they score that many points in the paint and we have a poor shooting night, you’re going to have the outcome that we had tonight. I think that Kansas is a very good basketball team. It was good for us to play them at our particular point in the season. We’re trying to get our program up to where we’d like to have it. I think all of this has been good for us.”
On struggling defensively:
“Kansas did a very good job of handling our press. They did a very good job of controlling the tempo. We could never get the tempo going our way. Normally we can get teams to play the way we want them to play. I think that’s a well-coached team. We really wanted the pace to be a little faster than it was, but their point guards did a great job of controlling the pace.”
