Louisville vs. Rutgers
January 29, 2011 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 29, 2011
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 
Louisville Head Coach Jeff Walz
(On the second half performance) "Sure it was fantastic. It wasn't just that we made a run, but that we actually guarded somebody which has been our problem all year. Unfortunately for our players, they now set the bar that we can guard, so they will be expected to do that every night. And I'm not sure that they are going to be really excited about that. But we have the ability to go out and defend and now we have to show it every night. If we really want to be a contender in this league, we have to guard. We have enough players on our team that can score, now it is a matter of shutting some people down, and that is what we did for about a 10 minute stretch. We contested shots and we boxed out. They got four offensive rebounds and I know that doesn't sound like many, but at the same time they did go 18 of 35 from the field. They had zero in the first half but they only missed six shots. That is what I told our team at half time `yeah it's great that they don't have any offensive rebounds but they only missed six shots.' We finally did a better job of contesting shots in the second half, and that really helped us on the defensive end."
(On the performance of Rutgers' April Sykes) "She is big time. She is a high school All-American and a fantastic player. She is from Mississippi and we recruited her when I was at Maryland. The year I got the job here was the year she was decided where she was going to go to school so obviously we didn't have any opportunity to recruit her here but out of high school. She is a big-time scorer and now she is starting to come into her own."
(On defending April Sykes in the second half) "It wasn't different. We gave her one wide open three - Antonita Slaughter just forgot who she was closing out on, that has been a problem for us. She closed out four steps in front of her and she (Sykes) takes a wide open three. From then on out we closed out on top of her and made her put the ball on the floor. We did a good job or forcing her baseline where help is going to be, and we caused her more difficulty to get up shots."
(On only giving up one shot in the last 11 minutes) "It was defense, but at the same time, we finally executed. There was a stretch where we ran five straight plays and we executed on all five of them. As a coach, honestly, that is what we were able to do my first two years here,that is what made us so good. We have stuff that I know will work, we just have to execute it. We came out and ran the same play three straight times and we scored off of three different options from it. That is when you know that finally, we are learning to execute. But at the same time, I have got to be able to get Charmaine Tay some more minutes. I have to get Antonita Slaughter more minutes. Asia Taylor has got to give us more minutes. But we look like we have a glazed look on our faces sometimes when we are out there. We play with no energy and no passion. You know, I can't give you 15 minutes to try and get going. When you come off that bench, you have to come in and give us a spark. I'll talk to them tomorrow because Tuesday is going to be a battle and its going to be a different style of basketball game. They are going to want to push the ball up and down and press us full court. Tonight we pressed and we turned them over 23 times, but we weren't really trying to get a bunch of steals off of it. I was hoping they would take 13 or 14 seconds to get it across half court so then all we would have to do is guard them for 15 seconds in the half court, which is what we did."
(On producing runs throughout the season) "Well we have kids who can score. Shoni (Schimmel) hit two threes in the second half, one right after they had just come down and hit a three. We get one from Becky Burke in the corner- Mo (Monique Reid) made a great pass to her. We have kids who can shoot the basketball. Now what we have to do is work to evolve our game. We have to get Becky (Burke) and Tia (Gibbs) in the gym to get more confident with their ball handling. Because if they can put the ball on the floor with confidence their entire game is going to get better, which means our team will get better."
(On the crowd at the KFC Yum! Center) "The crowd was fantastic. It is absolutely fantastic. Like I said on the radio, it says a lot about our entire city that they are willing to come out and back women's basketball like they do. It is my responsibility and my staff's responsibility to put a product out there that they are going to enjoy. And I think we have done that. We have some players out there that can do some things with the basketball that you don't see very often. We have a lot of kids that can shoot the three, and you don't always see three or four players on the same team that can do that. But it is our job as coaches to continue to put that out there and hopefully fans will bring friends and before you know it, they are bringing friends. But I would love to see our bottom bowl full every night. Tonight being the white out, I could really tell that there were a lot of seats in the season ticket holder area that weren't full. I hope that they will all start to come because I do think these young ladies deserve all of that support, they work extremely hard. But it is awesome for them to be able to come out here and play in front of a great crowd, because it got loud. There were three or four times tonight where it got really, really loud and I think that really helps us. We go on the road and will play in front of 300 or 1,000 people. Coaches from opposing teams will come up to me and ask `how are you all doing this. How do you get 15,000 or 22,000 people to come out to a women's game?' Our marketing department does a fantastic job. They work tirelessly to get fans to come. And like I tell them, we have to put a product on the floor that is entertaining. The final score was only 56-45, but I thought there were stretches where it was actually an entertaining game. But if we score 52 or 53 points every night, I'm not sure they would keep coming because they want to see points scored.
Rutgers Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer
(On the crowd noise compared to other tough arenas) "I thought they were much more vocal (Louisville), but you can't use that as an excuse. I thought it was good. It was a good flavor, something that you need at the next level. You are going to expect to get through that. We obviously fell to pieces."
(On the scoring drought in the second half) "We turned the ball over. We tried to get inside and they doubled on the inside. They dared us to shoot and we had only one person who could shoot, scoring from the outside. They did a nice job. We tried to get it inside. I think we could have been more successful. We need to be able to move it around and get the shot from anybody. I thought they did a nice job taking charges. They gave us the impression that it was open on the drives. Then when we did, they collapsed (on the drives). They did a nice job. I was really frustrated because we weren't physical enough. We weren't tough enough. We got a lot of calls (traveling) and that really hurt us. I've never seen as many walking calls. That was real deep. I'm anxious to see that because then you're hesitant in whatever it is that you need to do. That is what was happening. We became hesitant. We would start to take a drive and there would be somebody there. We were getting called for the charge. But they're good, they did a nice job."
