No. 15 Louisville vs. Rutgers
January 21, 2007 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 21, 2007
Recap | Final Stats | AP Photo Gallery 
Louisville, Ky - Louisville Head Coach Tom Collen
"This was a big win for a lot of reasons. We came out fine in first half, played great defense. We weren't real effective in the offensive end. We came out sleep walking in the second half; I can't tell you what to attribute that to. I know this team has this quiet type confidence and sometime when a team just surges on them, it shakes them up."
"Honestly, when we got down by sixteen, I thought we were ready to pack it in, that was my thought. We were working hard to try to get them to believe in themselves, but I saw them dropping their heads a little bit. To their credit, I thought we had a kid or two that wasn't afraid to step up and make shots. It wasn't real pretty, what we did offensively. We still didn't get very much offensive flow in the second half. We really tried to simplify things a little bit. The kids who stepped up and made shots, Angel McCoughtry stepped up and had three threes. The last thing I told her coming out of the locker room, she needed to start turning the three ball down and start attacking the basket and keep her head up and give it to somebody else. Then she comes out and she's the one who ignites us and hits three threes in the second half, that tells me how much control I have over her at times. Sometimes you've just got to let a kid step up and be who they are; she's obviously got a lot of confidence."
"If nothing else I think we played with a great deal of confidence down the stretch. I'm not sure at what point in time, we were down sixteen, but I think maybe the last eight minutes of the game I thought we played with a little more heart and a little more confidence."
"It was a great win for us, beating Rutgers. I honestly believe watching tape on them, when they came in here they were a top ten team. They just got through blowing out two top twenty-five teams by twenty-five points and I think they were ready to enter back into the polls. I don't know whether they'll go back into the polls now, because of losing here to us, but one thing I can tell you they're going to be there in the end. When you come to the BIG EAST Tournament, you're going to see them down there in the stretch in the end fighting for a BIG EAST championship. You are going to see them back in the top twenty and I thing you're going to see them being at least a sweet sixteen team, I just think they are that good."
"It's a big win for us, because even though the perception on them is that they are not that good because they dropped out of the polls. I think I can tell you the media across the country has so much respect for Rutgers and who they are and how talented they are and for the tradition they've had. I think people are really going to take notice. I think this will turn out to be a pretty big win for us."
(Best team you've beat this year?) "I don't think there's any question, it is. It's not the most exciting game that we've played, certainly, but Rutgers does that to you. Three of the last four teams that they've played they held to 37, 39, and 40points. They're starting to become the team Rutgers is known for, and that is defense. I think they are rapidly becoming one of the better defensive teams in the country, even for us to step up and get 53 against them. Even though I'm not ready to the word, I'm ready to say that we're an offensive juggernaut for scoring 53 against them. I think that was enough to win the game combined with the defense that we played. I think Coach Eatman did a great job with the scout on them. He was very, very prepared and I thought our defense was solid throughout the game from beginning to end. We slept walked just a little bit coming out of the locker room. They made some adjustments; they came out with a lot of confidence and just penetrated and kicked and made shots. That's all they did. We adjusted back on them so I give him (Coach Eatman) a lot of credit as well. He did a great job on the scout and he knows them very well. I think that was a big difference on the game."
(On Jazz Covington) "You know I still believe that Jazz is still the centerpiece and the heart of this team. I think that Angel is a kid who makes spectacular plays and she's going to step up and she's going to ignite us. I think that once she gets going, she plays with a lot of confidence. The one thing about Jazz, I think over the last seven or eight games in particular, I think there was a point in time where people were wondering where Jazz was at because she's had such an illustrious career here and there was so much hype leading into the season and we were all going to jump on her back and then all of a sudden there was the emergence of Angel and then there was Jazz who fell into shadows and got off to a rocky start. I can tell you the last seven, eight, or nine games Jazz Covington has been the most consistent player on the floor for us. She was typical tonight, rebounding, defensively, I think she got the little dump and dish as easy as the shot was, she caught it and put in the basket from Patrika. Those two are still our mainstays; Angel's spectacular, she's the show, but Jazz is the rock. I think we are going to have her step up and be steady the rest of the year and we need that if we are going to be a top fifteen team."
Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer
"I thought Louisville played a really intense game. I thought the fans helped a lot. I'm not surprised that people like Angel McCoughtry and Jazz Covington stepped up when they did. Radde also played well. It's amazing what people do when they're at home. They played with a great deal of confidence. I was disappointed because I thought we gave into the pressure. You could see it in our eyes and that's amazing. Just the threat of pressure - they acted like they've never seen two people coming at them at the same time. Maybe it's because I over-exaggerated what I thought they were going to do. It was the thought of what they were going to do."
"Did they surprise us with anything? No. I thought they rebounded well. We've got to get better rebounding from more people. It wasn't particularly great shooting night. I think that had more to do with the fact that we were never in sync the way we were playing 1-3-1 zone. I didn't think we were ourselves. I thought we were a little uncomfortable. Essence was hitting shots earlier, Matee was struggling quite a bit and Epiphany was struggling big-time because she just wasn't stepping in and taking the shots we expected those to take."
"I think what happens with freshmen - I don't think I need to say another thing to freshmen because they take everything literally. That is when you move the ball around and you've got a shot at 15 feet- well because you said to come and attack that's what she's trying to do. And the shot was there. She's just consistent. She's probably better hitting outside shots. How you get that to be understood, I'm not sure. She's probably trying to figure out what's going on."
"It came back because we weren't very mature as my seniors weren't stable. They just didn't show up. I think the threat of pressure to Brittany or Epiphany was enough to cause them to shake. Under extreme pressure we've got to have a steady hand. I didn't think we were as calm as we needed to be. A couple of things we wanted to do was press, but we couldn't because we really weren't scoring."
(On the crowd) "I think the crowd was major. I don't care what we say. I don't think it should have shown on the face of the team, nor Essence - long story short. Epiphany - I'm not surprised at what she didn't do, or what Brittany didn't do. But my three seniors, should not have shown at all - there should have been a sense of calmness - but there just wasn't. It doesn't even matter whether the turnovers they gave us. It's perhaps they way we looked or the way that we tried to get rid of it real quick, that's trouble. We started running patterns the opposite way -we did that twice. On the last play we were supposed to run something called New York. That last play was as misdirected as anything I've ever seen. It's as if we lost our minds."
