Marquette University Athletics
Post-game Quotes
2/23/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 23, 2008
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Head Coach Terri Mitchell
Opening Statement
"Obviously we didn't start the game as we planned or drew up, but the game is 40 minutes, not matter what lead we have or what lead a team takes on us. We broke it down into small segments. We kept giving them goals every media timeout of what we need to do and to adjust. I felt like the way we ended the first half with a lot of momentum. We talked about going into halftime with a single digit defcit. People keep stepping up to the plate."
"Obviously Jocelyn Mellen didn't start so good with the airball, but I called her over and said "that's not you, you're so much better than that."She knew that and her teamamates looked for her. I love that we didn't give up, it's an important time of year for us. This is a great win for us, we get a day off tomorrow and shift our attention to Villanova."
About the early deficit:
"Sometimes teams score quick on us and it pushes us to take our offense out of our game. I say you lock down on defense and the offense will come. If you focus your attention on the offense and keep missing, which we were early, you get tight. Everybody knows. Pressure of the game, you get tight. But that should never effect your defense. What I kept calling those first timeouts and saying, I want you focused on defense. I don't case about the offense right now. It'll be there. Once they changed their focus, we were getting stops, deflections, the offense was there because we were relaxed then. We know we have scorers. We know we have great ability. It's just a matter of where you focus it. The crowd was awesome, they really helped us. We had some momentum changes and they helped us with that."
Junior guard Krystal Ellis
About the early deficit and her 3-point shot with 4:01 left to play:
"I think our defense really. In our timeouts the coaches said the whole time, pick up our defense and our offense will come. So we picked up our defense and I saw a wide open three. When I hit it, it helped a lot."
(Mitchell): "That was a huge momentum shift. She is someone that hits money shots. She's being humble and that's great . Nellie found her and krystal finished it. That helped us. That's all confidence and experience. The team has committed to shooting extra. This is three weeks of it and it's making a huge difference. Now those pressure situations they aren't thinking about the shot, because they've shot 400 extra shots in practice. They're thinking about game situation and what they can do. The two shots were great, but teamamates had to find the,. 20 assists to 14 turnovers, that's great."
About the play of the freshman:
(Ellis): I think so, we don't really consider them freshman anymore. The beginning of they year they had to learn how to playt the game, and make the transformation. Now they're just players on the court. We know who the freshman are, but we don't look at them playing as frehman. Angel stepped up and she doesn't play like a freshman. Jocelyn stepped up in the last few games and has really been one of our best post players. I feel like they're not really freshman anymore. It's just a title now.
Freshman Jocelyn Mellen
About the strength of Pittsburgh center Marcedes Walker:
"I didn't personally guard Marcedes Walker, but V, Page, and Kelly gave a really great effort. All though practice these past two days we had a real focus of boxing her out. We wanted to have two people to push her back and have the opportunoity to grab the ball from her."
About pressure:
"I don't feel pressure. I think together as a team we all know our roles, our responsibilities. If someone isn't having a good night somebody else will step up. I don't think there's that pressure there to play your role it just kind of happens. It's within the flow of the game."
