Louisville vs. Marquette
February 16, 2010 | Women's Basketball
Feb. 16, 2010
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery 
Louisville Head Coach Jeff Walz
"We needed a win bad. It's great to win. We've played 13 games in the conference. You take the Connecticut game out, the St. John's game out, and the last five minutes of the Cincinnati game out, and we're in every one of them. You lose seven games in the league by six points or less, you're doing something right. Unfortunately, we didn't have the bodies to keep going out there. I tell people that I've coached a lot of years of basketball and we played for the national championship game last year, which was remarkable. I have a great staff, and I think we've probably done just as good of a job coaching this year as we have in the past two years. We have a kid out there at point guard that nobody thought could play anywhere and she just continues to get better and better. You have Asia Taylor, who everybody keeps saying is not that good. I keep telling people that she broke her leg and tore every ligament in her ankle her senior year of high school and she was out for nine months and couldn't do anything until October 15th. That was our first day of practice. You're not going from your junior year of high school to your senior year of high school; you're going from your senior year of high school to college. The level of play is so much higher, and it's taken her a year to get back. To be honest with you, I should've red-shirted her, but I couldn't. If I did that, we wouldn't have been able to play in half of the games. I'm excited about her because she gets into the gym and works her tail off. She's starting to see that hard work pays off. She made some big time plays for us."
(On the pregame speech) "I just told them the truth. They wanted a speech, and I told them I am out of speeches. I told Becky Burke, that you've played two games and have not gotten one rebound. I told her that the first rebound she gets, we're going to take a time out to celebrate, and we did. I think that our bench was more excited about that than the win. I thought she played a better defensive game tonight than she had in a month. I read her the article on our Pittsburgh game from one of our fan sites, the Card Game. I read it to Becky and this is her mindset. It says, `Becky Burke finally came out of her shooting slump even though she couldn't guard a statue in cement.' Becky's first comment in front of all of us was wondering when she was in a shooting slump. I said `Becky, that's our problem, nothing about you not being able to guard a statue in cement stuck out to you.' Her teammates are laughing saying, `Becky, are you kidding?' Finally, I thought she went out tonight and tried to defend. My challenge to her last year in our Maryland game, was I put her on Kristi Toliver and we played Oklahoma in the Final Four, and I put her on Whitney Hand. They were the two best guards that we had faced all year, and she did an unbelievable job. Now, I have to get her back into the mindset of offensively, you're doing a great job for us, but you still have to guard. That's what we talked about, that commitment and hard work pays off."
(On Monique Reid) "I challenged her after the first seven minutes. She turned the ball over three times in the first seven minutes of play. I told her in order for us to win, she can't do that. She has to be strong with the basketball and take care of it. She had three turnovers and no assists in the first seven minutes of the game and she ends up with four assists and four turnovers, so she was four to one for the rest of the game. It is tough for Monique to play 40 minutes. Honestly, she's a 32-34 minutes a game player, until she can get in better shape. Unfortunately, she's got some tendinitis is her knee and we have to try to limit her reps in practice, so she's not able to get as much conditioning as we would like. Tonight, I thought she played really, really hard. I'll sit down and watch the film with her. She did everything we asked her to do. Out of the last two minutes of the half, she just kind of stood there on defense. I'll show her, and she'll learn from it. She'll pick it up and try to correct it, but she made some big plays for us and got some big offensive boards and put backs. It's encouraging because I've said it all year that this program is going in the right direction and we're going to continue to climb. It's just hard to do when you have six players that you were expecting to play who are out for the year. It is what it is, but we continue to fight as we have done all season. We've got a big game at Seton Hall on Tuesday night and the kids will have tomorrow off.
(On the high shooting percentage) "We finally made the extra pass in back-to-back games. We had I think 18 assists at Pittsburgh and 14 tonight. We worked hard in practice the past five days on playing four-on-four throwing it to the post and double the post, with the post having to find the open player. I thought that we did a fantastic job of making the extra pass, but like I keep telling them, it is easier to shoot when nobody's guarding you than it is when somebody's guarding you. Finally, we're making the extra pass, and we're getting wide open shots. This is two games in a row that they've given me the opportunity to coach. Its fun when you can call plays, when you see the flow of the game, and Burke hits two threes in front of our bench on set plays. In our St. John's game, we turned the ball over 21 times in the first half. I was just calling 9-1-1 asking someone to come help. That's how bad it was, but when we execute, it gives us a chance to win, and we're actually a pretty good basketball team."
Sophomore Forward Monique Reid
(On needing the win) "Oh yeah, we've been on a losing streak and we were miserable. That game brought joy to everybody. We played harder tonight than we've played in a long time. I'm really glad we played hard. We had Asia (Taylor) stepping up tonight, getting big rebounds. The whole team played hard, not just Shelby (Harper). That's our biggest problem, nobody plays as hard as Shelby (Harper) and tonight we matched her intensity."
(On last game's effort) "Last game I knew they were taller than me so I was driving into them hoping to get a foul and they would block my shot. Now being smarter, I'm using my body and they're double teaming me, so I kick it to my teammates. I just want to be aggressive. "
(On the play of sophomore and freshman) "That's all we have, so we play like that every day. We have six people in practice while others have class. We do what we can which gives us confidence because we all are freshmen and sophomores. "
Sophomore Guard Becky Burke
"I think we came out really strong. I think it was Coach Walz in the pregame. He had us real loose and excited to play. He took a different approach today joking around and just being a little sarcastic in the locker room and I think it got everybody loosened up. We had nothing to lose and just came out really strong which is something we haven't done the past few games."
(On carrying win to next game) "We needed the win, it's been awhile. I wouldn't say the monkeys off our back yet, we need another win, and we need to win out. I wish this would have happened earlier in the season, but there's nothing we can do about it. We need to get better the rest of this year, try to make post season play and then try and get better for next season at the same time.
(On Asia Taylor) "I'm very mad at her because this is what she can do every night plus some. She just decided tonight to play. This is the Asia Taylor that Coach Walz recruited and everybody was hyped about. This is the Asia Taylor that's going to go from here and keep going up."
(On the play of sophomore and freshman) "If we can start doing it now, we will get back to the Final Four. With the coaching staff we have, the players we have and the players we're getting, there's definitely confidence there that we can continue to get better."
Freshman Forward Asia Taylor
"It was basically in the locker room today, coach was making everybody laugh and I was in a good mood. He just motivated everybody, it was good, it was a good atmosphere and everybody wanted to play hard for the team. It wasn't just one person who wanted to play hard. Once that happens I was just doing what I could do. And evidently I was getting rebounds."
