Louisville vs. Connecticut
January 31, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 31, 2006
UConn head coach Geno Auriemma
"When you play on the road, you do have a great opportunity to find out what you have and what you're made of and it's not easy when you're a freshman because so much is expected. I told her in the lockerroom, you should feel terrible that you waste away 10 games building confidence. She has a lot of ability, she's very good under pressure. She's not bothered by it. She's hard for me to coach because when I talk to her she doesn't listen. She's not bothered by anything, she's not affected. I knew she was going to make free throws. Both games this weekend were the kinds of games I expected. We played in two great environments this weekend (DePaul and Louisville). This will be a great place to play. Certainly Louisville deserves a lot credit for how well they played. We got up 17 with 19:50 left in the game. Some teams would have gone from down 17 to down 27. They ran off 12 straight points. That says a lot about them. It's going to be like this every night on the road. I told our guys more important than the win, we came out with the sense that we're pretty tough - pretty resilient. I don't' know if we would have come out with that a month ago. We've made progress, we've come a long way. I don't think this trip could have gone any better."
"I thought it was our defense, but in the second half it wasn't the case. We're starting to get better at seeing things, recognizing things. We're more confident in ourselves. It's dawning on me that I have to do diff. things with our team. This group of guys I've got to keep challenging them. I think what's happened."
On Louisville's play "I don't know that I can say I was surprised because I didn't know what Louisville team we would face. To their credit, I think they play to their strengths. They played with a lot of poise for the most part. A lot of times the shot clock was running down and they made their shots. I thought it was going to be as tough as it really was. Anytime we come to town and they advertise the biggest crowd ever, we know what to expect. It was a real honor for me to coach in this building after watching it on tv all these years."
Louisville head coach Tom Collen
"We did a lot of things well tonight. We came in, wanting to concentrate on Strother and Thomas, and wanted to shut down Turner on the inside. I look at the stat sheet and for the most part, we did that. To UConn's credit Renee Montgomery came out, a tremendous freshman stepped up and played lights out, 26 points, played well down the stretch. Charde Houston came alive on us, we didn't contain her very well. All in all, I was happy with the effort, happy with the crowd. I was happy with the fact that we came back twice in the second half. We just didn't quite execute down the stretch. We couldn't get a rebound. How many times do you see, you get a missed free throw, you've got a chance. We couldn't get the rebound. We took some rebounders off the floor and put some shooters in because we had a play that we were going to run at the end. But the ball bounced over the shooter's head. It wasn't really that we didn't box anybody out, the rebound went long and we didn't scramble and go get it. We had our chances, we needed to execute a little better at times to come away with the win. But there are a lot of things to be happy with. "
On the crowd "I loved the crowd, we had 9,000 people. This is a good venue. I was disappointed that UConn wasn't on a weekend. It's hard on weeknights with school. They cheered really loud. I thought we gave them something to cheer about. After the game I was walking around talking to some of the fans and they were appreciative of effort we gave. They said they would be coming back."
