Louisville vs. IUPUI
December 13, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 13, 2009
Louisville Head Coach Jeff Walz
(On the victory with only eight players, and the three suspended players missing out on the game) "It's not just about winning a basketball game. We are trying to get these kids prepared for life. Everybody likes to win. I understand that and that's great, and if all I cared about was trying to win basketball games, I would let these kids slide by and just try to talk to them. What I've learned, is that you have to take something away from them that means something and when you do that, hopefully they'll understand that every action has a consequence. It can be a good consequence or a bad consequence. For them, they decided to try to slide one by on me, so their consequence now is they didn't play today and they'll be up at six for awhile running in the morning. Hopefully, they might understand."
(On the defense and the turnovers) "During the first thirteen minutes of the game, I thought we played really well. It's 36-11 at the 6:51 mark, and we had turned the ball over four times. We were doing a nice job of just getting shots. We were shooting pretty well as a team. Then the last seven minutes, we turned the ball over seven times, which leads to 11 points for them. They wound up scoring 15 points in the last 6:51 in the half, when we had held them to 11 for the first 13 minutes, and 11 of them came directly off of our turnovers. I'm just concerned with how little we value the basketball. We're going to be going on the road here now for three straight games, with one at Tennessee, one at Kentucky, and then, up to New Hampshire, where if we don't figure out a way in a hurry how to value the basketball, it could get ugly. You can't turn the ball over 24 times against a Tennessee team at Tennessee and expect to win the game. I'm extremely concerned about that. Monique Reid's got to show up. She was a no factor today."
(On Nikki Burton) "Nikki Burton has a chance to be a very special player. She had six boards for us and she had seven assists, but the thing with her right now is she plays at one speed, and it's not real fast. You never see her accelerate past someone. You never see her slow herself down to make someone stand up and then accelerate by them. That's why she turns the ball over six times. After a while, you can learn to gauge someone's speed, and that's what they did to her, and she was throwing the ball right to them. They were like three great passes, but unfortunately, they were to the wrong team."
(On the suspensions to three of the players) "Yeah, the behavior, that's detrimental to the program. Unfortunately, they did some things; that is not what we accept or tolerate, and then, on the backside of it, lied about it. So I am not going to deal with players that can't be upfront honest. When you make a mistake, you step up and admit to it and move on, but unfortunately, those three decided to try to get by with a lie. As we all know, it eventually comes back to bite you in the butt."
(On one of the players not being a freshman, and if it should be looked at differently) "No, I don't care, a lie is a lie."
Sophomore guard Becky Burke
(What jumps out from this game to you) "Turnovers, I don't feel like we should have that many turnovers. It's something we've been trying to work on, lowering our turnovers. They weren't a real pressuring team, so we definitely shouldn't have had that many turnovers."
(on staying focused) "I think last year's team we had a `bury them' mentality, when we were up 20, we wanted to be up 50. I think this year's team is more, if we're up 20, okay we're winning - it's fine. We need to get last year's mentality."
(on this team's learning curve) "The mentality that coach has is that it's his way or the highway. That's how it is here at Louisville. His way obviously works. He won a national championship at Maryland and we played for one last year, so if you want to test him, go ahead and test him, but it's his way."
(on winning without three players) "It's good for us. I think Rachel got a lot of good minutes tonight, I think Shelby played a lot of good minutes, and I think Nikki played good at point. It gave people a lot of opportunity to step up and play some minutes that they might not have gotten if the other three had been playing. Overall I think when somebody's out, you have to pick up the slack. We had eight people and all we need is six."
(on the week ahead) "This is a very big week. We're ready to look ahead now, because we got this game under our belts. We have a lot of work to do. It'll be a big challenge for our team."
Senior center Chauntise Wright
(on this team's learning curve) "With the turnovers and the young team, people are still trying to adjust to being out of high school. It should be at the point where they're used to it, but we're still working on our freshmen getting used to coaching styles and rules that you have to abide by. There are consequences for breaking rules. Unlike high school, you may have been the best player on the team, so they let you get away with stuff like that."
(on her performance) "I think this game helped me work on my confidence. It was a confidence thing, getting my knee together and being able to go hard on it and then have my teammates behind me. They believe in me, I just need to believe in myself."
Freshman guard Nikki Burton
(on staying focused) "I think that's something we've really got to work on, just staying ahead and not looking for turnovers. Turnovers are what killed us today." (on the progression of her game) "I knew we only had eight people tonight, so I wanted to go out on the floor and put it all out there and contribute in some kind of way."
