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Postgame Quotes vs. Longwood
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Postgame Quotes
Virginia 62, Longwood 49
Nov. 10, 2007
Virginia head coach Debbie Ryan
Opening Statement:
“I’d like to congratulate the Longwood team; they are light-years better than they were two years ago when they came to U-Hall. I think that my team started off strong and the only thing we really didn’t do well in the first half was rebound the ball. We defended the ball very well, but we didn’t rebound. We didn’t shoot free throws very wellwe only had three.
“We improved the free throw shooting in the second half, but our chemistry offensively wasn’t very good. It doesn’t surprise me. I spent an inordinate amount of time on defense this year and it’s a priority for this team. It’s an important aspect and now we’ll just be spending a lot more time on the offense and our chemistry offensively.
“We just weren’t as good tonight. I tried to play some people who have been out for the last six weeks. Abby (Robertson) and Jayna (Hartig) have both been out of action for 6-8 weeks and I was trying to get them a little playing time to get them ready for whatever comes next. It just sort of threw us off a bit. If you keep the numbers down, your chemistry is a little better, but I was trying to get as many people playing time as I could tonight.”
On the defense:
“I thought we played fairly well defensively. Our second half was not nearly as good as it should have been, but I was shuffling players in and out, some for foul trouble, others because we just got some combinations in there that weren’t good combinations. I felt like we played very well in the first half, but we could have played a lot better in the second half. We just didn’t have the same help-side defense, we weren’t as active with our hands, and we rebounded the ball a little bit better, but it still wasn’t as good as it needed to be.”
On Aisha Mohammed:
“We’ve got to work out some kinks. We’ve got a player who plays a lot of minutes, who just doesn’t understand the language as well as we do. So there are just some things I’ve got to work out and it’s going to take a little time.”
On the play of Monica Wright:
“She was just off a little bit. They kept calling walking violations and I think she just didn’t understand what was going on. She’s so quick, she just wasn’t getting the ball down fast enough and they were calling the walk. That’s an emphasis this year, and Monica is going to have to adjust a little bit.”
Senior guard Sharne Zoll
On her last first game:
“I just want to forget it. I tried not to think about it but then coach brought it up in the locker room. I’m just glad we came out with the win. It wasn’t even close to how we wanted to play, but we came out with the win and that’s all that matters.”
On the offense:
“We have a lot of scorers and a lot of talent on the team, so we took a little time off of that and just worked on our defense and that was the emphasis of the season. But our chemistry wasn’t there tonight. It was tough running our plays against their zone defense, so I hope we get to do some offense next week. We need to get our timing right, we had a lot of turnovers, it was kind of sloppy.”
On the defense:
“In the first half, it was great. The second half, it wasn’t so great. We let them get a lot of lay-ups and things like that. If we could play 40 minutes like we played our first 20, then we’ll be where we want to be.”
Junior center Aisha Mohammed
On her first game:
“It was fantastic. I’ve been out for more than a year, and half the time I was out, I wasn’t really happy. But right now I’m back and I’m really happy to be on the court. This is just the first game, so we’re just getting started.”