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Postgame Quotes: Indiana at Virginia
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Indiana at Virginia
Dec. 1, 2011
Postgame Quotes
Virginia head coach Joanne Boyle
On Indiana’s run at the end of the first half:
“Sloppy. Turnovers – we had 15 in the first half. I think everybody participated in that festival. Fifteen turnovers and my three starting guards had a lot of those. I think that comes into play [especially] when Chelsea [Shine] and Ari [Moorer] are sitting with two fouls. We need more production from our bench in terms of maintaining our level of play or raising it. That’s a struggle that we are having as well. It’s a combination of both.”
On how traveling affects the team:
“I mean, you never want to make an excuse but it has been a long haul. It’s 12 hours on a flight [to Hawaii]. We don’t have a deep bench. We played three games and most of the teams that were out there that I talked to aren’t playing again until Sunday so to come back and have a game on Thursday is a little rough but it’s a challenge for us. I’m not going to back away from a challenge. It’s another game to learn from. We have a lot of work to do. I think it is more mental than anything right now.”
On what she said to the team after the game:
“I told them it’s not about the win because it’s about lessons learned. Whether you learn it now or learn it later you’re going to learn it at some point. You are not always going to be in the “W” column. I’m excited about the win and I’m glad to take it and all but we have a lot to learn in terms of getting put in these situations. We have to learn how to value possessions. Last week, we were on everybody about rebounding and we were doing a great job of taking care of the ball. Now, all of the sudden, it’s taking care of the ball and we’re doing a better job rebounding. They know their identity. They’re a smart team – they really are. They didn’t play smart but we always have to play smart or to the best of our ability, which we didn’t do tonight. I also think we need to become a more physically imposing team. We are trying to rebound as the ball is coming through the basket. We have to be able to push back and fight for those rebounds. We can’t get balls out of bounds and we can’t get balls ripped out of our hands. I think those are the two things. We have to be more physically imposing.”
On Virginia’s defense:
“We kind of watch balls go up and we don’t react to that. We’re working really hard at the zone defense. We are getting traps. We are getting steals. We have to be able to convert that. What happens is we are working just as hard on the offensive end. It’s hard enough to work on the defensive end. If you’re going to get easy baskets then you have to be able to convert them. Instead we are working so hard on the defensive end and have to turn around and execute everything on the offensive end. That’s where we are going to get some of our breaks and rest our legs a little bit.”
Virginia guard Ataira Franklin
On the first half:
“It’s definitely a situation where we need to stay more composed. We got a little rattled. We weren’t really good with timing during the game. It’s definitely something we are going to get better at but it was really frustrating at times with them chipping away at the lead. At some point we just have to settle down. Like Coach [Boyle] said, we’re a smarter team than how we played tonight.”
Indiana Head Coach Felisha Legette-Jack
On Aulani Sinclair’s performance:
“We did a great job with that. Sometimes you only have a certain amount of marbles and you just have to play them all. You just have to go out there and see what happens. She’s a junior and she knows how to play with two fouls. We certainly don’t want to go in with that, but I didn’t see the other guards being able to step up with that momentum at that time. I thought she could come and do a good job, and she did.”
On Virginia’s defense:
“It’s the same zone we play. It’s something they face everyday. What we have to do is attack it. You have to go in attack mode, but we played passive. We learned a tough lesson.”
On Virginia’s program:
“You have a great coach here. I think she does a tremendous job of creating discipline in the team and discipline in her defense. They don’t get over-emotional on missed opportunities. They just get back and play defense. She has some veteran kids on her team that she has inherited too, so that [works] well for her. On our end we have a young team that is going to be really good later on, but we just have to learn our lessons early. We can’t just come into an ACC school like Virginia who knocked off Tennessee and not be seasoned. We’re not seasoned yet, but we will be soon. We had 18 offensive rebounds in the second half, so that says a lot about who we can become.”
On being on the road quite often this season:
“You can play people in the ally, or you can play people in the park, just as long as you play the game. It’s a beautiful game to learn life lessons. Wherever you play it, the blessings still come down.”