Louisville vs. Kentucky
December 21, 2007 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 20, 2007
Louisville Head Coach Jeff Walz
(On the return of Angel McCoughtry after her second-half injury)
"I was just trying to find out if she was going to come back and play. I mean if she does, great, if she doesn't, that's fine. I was trying to get our kids to understand that we've played without Angel before. We played without her for 14 minutes at Vermont and that was a 35-point win. I told our kids that I don't think we handled it very well when she went down. We've won seven games up to this point playing as a team. But I thought we took about three steps back. For about six minutes there we got killed on the offensive glass. We had done a decent job defending them, but on their missed shots it was offensive rebound after offensive rebound. That's one thing that's really disappointing to me is to give up 20 offensive rebounds in a game, especially some crucial ones like we did."
(On accumulating a lot of points off turnovers)
"That's how we try to play. Our goal every night is to get 20 points off of turnovers. We had 12 in the first half. I thought in the second half we got to the point where we were standing around, watching Kentucky go after loose balls and play hard. It's a learning experience each game. We've played 10 games and we've been on the road for eight of them. I'm really proud of how this team played. This group has gone through a lot, played extremely hard and I'm proud of them."
(On the basket that got Louisville going in the second half)
"We were stuck on 51 for about five minutes it seemed like to me. We got an offensive rebound by Candyce Bingham who the got a putback. I think Kentucky had cut the lead to nine; she puts it back in there and puts it back to 11. I think that gave us a little lift and from there I think the kids were like, `Okay the ball will go in again.'"
Louisville Forward Angel McCoughtry
(On having to sit out while she got stitches)
"It was so hard to wait to go back in. All that I kept saying was `what's the score' and `how much time is left' the whole time. I just really wanted to get back to the game and I was nervous about how it was going. Having to sit out for so long just made me want to play harder. All my team was missing was leadership. When I went out there they looked like they had their heads down a little bit. So and I just went out there and told them to pick it up."
(On getting off to a good start)
"It was a good start for us and we continued to play good defense. We got a lot of transition points and points off turnovers that helped give us that big lead."
(On what it means to have a big lead on a rival like Kentucky)
"It was definitely a good feeling. But we have to learn to keep that lead and not slow down. We can't let them come back like they almost did."
