Louisville vs. Pikeville
November 05, 2013 | Women's Basketball
Nov. 5, 2013
Recap | Final Stats | Photo Gallery 
Louisville head coach Jeff Walz
(On Asia Taylor) "I thought Asia (Taylor), Shawnta' (Dyer), and Tia (Gibbs) looked great. I was really excited for all three of them. Shawnta', conditioning wise, hasn't been able to go full (speed) the entire practice every day, and is a little behind. But I thought she pushed through a lot today. She played 17 minutes; she goes 2 for 2 from the free throw line, which is what I wanted to see. I'm proud of all of them. I just wanted to make sure she was physically in shape. She looked good. She rebounded the basketball and shot the ball well.
I'm just going to continue to challenge her to know what shots are best. She thinks she's Reggie Miller out there. She hits one three and all of the sudden she wants to fire up the second one when she had Shoni (Schimmel) wide open on the wing. Those are the areas I'm trying to get her to understand. The first one was a good shot because everyone was guarded. The second one, there was a reason you were wide open. They want you to take the shot. When you've got arguably one of your best shooters open you have to be able to make that next pass. I was really pleased with how she played and I thought she did a great job."
(What do you take away from a blowout like this?) "We're not concerned about the score of the game. I was more excited with how hard we competed for 40 minutes. Instead of starting to play sloppy, I thought we did a nice job of continuing to defend, continuing to push the basketball. We executed well for the most part. In the second half we ran a lot more sets just to get some game time with that. Everybody had the opportunity to play. Obviously it won't be like that the entire year, but when you get that opportunity you want to try to do that. "
(On execution and only having one turnover in the first half) "That's what we want to do. I really wasn't pleased with the last six minutes of the game because at one point in time we had 30 assists to one turnover, and we ended up 33 assists to 8 turnovers. So we had three assists to eight turnovers in the last seven and a half minutes of the game. That's what we have to cut out."
(On the new rules being implemented this year) "For the most part it's fine. They've added one where if you call the first timeout of the second half within 30 seconds of your upcoming media timeout it's going to substitute as your media timeout. So if you call a timeout with 16:10, even though you're calling a thirty second timeout, it's going to count as a media. So you can't call them back-to-back. It's going to kind of speed up the game some and keeps the flow going."
(On the new 10 second backcourt rule) "The 10 second rule is great. It's good and bad though. Some teams we play we press, not trying to get a steal because I know they're going to throw the ball back and forth. When they get in the front court they've only got 14 or 15 seconds to run an offense. Now they have to push it in transition and they have to get it across. So it's good sometimes and bad others." (On what he said to the Pikeville team) "Their head coach and I were both assistants when we had the opportunity to win a National Championship at Maryland in 2006. That's why she came up here. We talked on the phone and she wanted the opportunity to come up here and play an exhibition game and I thought it would be great. I just wanted to make sure her kids knew I was impressed with how some of them competed. Number 11 (Brogan Conley) really went out there and competed hard. She's strong and she really got after it. That's really what I told them. Don't worry about the score of this game. You just played against a team that played for a National Championship and returned five starters and four of them played and three other kids came back from injury. We don't have three people that I can throw in at the end of the game that are bad. I'm not going to expect them to not play hard. It is not acceptable. So no matter what the score is, whoever is out there is going to play hard. I'm not going to put three kids in the game who might all be point guards at the end just because I want to have them out there. We're going to have them by position so that they know what to do. It's one of those things where whatever five I've got out there, they're talented enough to play. I just encouraged them to continue to listen to coach Joanna; she does a great job and told them I expect them to do well this year."
(On atmosphere with kids) "It was neat. I mean it is a great opportunity for us to let our youth come in here and see a basketball game. I think they all loved the beanies that were passed out to them. They have something to take home with them. I think three- fourths of them were wearing them the entire game. They have a souvenir to take home with them and hopefully they become cardinal fans."
(On this team being the deepest he's had here) "That is something we are very fortunate with. I mean we have a very, very deep basketball team. I said that before, the biggest challenge for us is going to be how we handle that as a basketball team. There are going to be some games you might not play as much as you want. How are you going to be when you get back to the dorm or when your parents call? They are the ones that aren't at practice every day. I know how it can be as a player. You get on the phone call from your parents or your friends, "Why aren't you playing?" It is how we are going to stay together as a team that will impact what we do this year more than anything."
(On Asia's physical condition) "She's fine. She's back at 100%. She rebounds so well. She goes after the ball. When you do that you have the chance to make an impact on a game. She has the chance to have a great season."
(On Henderson's impact) "She'll continue to improve her fitness level as we get going and start playing. She is very strong. She's got a nice 15-foot jump shot, as you have seen. We just need to continue to get her to focus on finishing around the basket. She missed three or four but she gets around and puts them back up. But really, we just continue to have her come on slowly. There's no sense to throw her out there for 40 minutes and go through some bad spells. We have some depth and if she gets tired, I'm just going to pull her out. We'll continue to improve her stamina."
(On the season opener) "Tomorrow is our off day, so we'll come back Thursday, Friday and play on Saturday. Loyola Chicago is a good basketball team. They got a very talented point guard, two post players that can play on a BCS team, you know we are going to have to show up and play. It's not going to be a walk in the park. I hope our kids prepared for that. We have expressed that to them, so I think they will be. We have been saying that for seven years now. Our job is to play for 40 minutes. We let the score take care of itself. If we come out and do what we are supposed to and bust it, we are going to win a lot more games than we lose, if you just compete for 40 minutes."
Asia Taylor, Forward
(What did it feel like to be back on the court and, overall, how did you play?) "It felt great to be back out there. I realized how much I missed it, but today was just the first time I actually got to be out there with my team. It just felt like another game, another day. It's another start to this year; we're trying to make another Final Four."
(What percentage do you think you are? You think you're back at 100 percent?) "I'm 100 percent. I feel great. My hip doesn't bother me the way it used to. I'm doing rehab still."
(What were some of your concerns as far as getting up to speed? Did you have anything in particular you were worried about as far as getting back into your rhythm?) "Really for me it was just mental. My body just, coming back after surgery last year, wasn't where I wanted to be, where I felt like I could be effective. So that mentally kind of did something to me. But my teammates keep me positive and keep me going, and I know as long as, physically, I feel I'm ok, mentally I'll be alright."
(What were some things that you guys needed to work on taking away from this game) " We need to work on our closeouts and rebounding, communication on defense and not just getting rebounds against Pikeville because we're taller than them but actually boxing out , doing the little things , making good passes and emphasis on not turning the ball over. We kind of do that when we play lower competition, but I think we did a great job today."
(Opinion on the 10 second rule) "I think it's good for the women's game just to speed it up more so that there's action and more stuff going on instead of people just passing the ball back and forth. I's going to speed up the game and make it more exciting for you all."
Tia Gibbs, Guard (What can you take away from a game like this?) "I think we knew we were playing a lower competition team, but we wanted to step out and play our game. We're not playing against Pikeville; we're playing against ourselves. We're not trying to beat Pikeville; we're trying to make it to the Final Four. We wanted to go back to the details and work on our closeouts and rebounding. No matter who our opponent is, we have to work on us first."
(What do the coaches have you working on for the regular season opener?) "Defense, defense, defense. He's been preaching it heavy on us lately because we know we can score. We just put up 100+ points, so we don't have a problem scoring, we can score with the best of them. Our thing is, can we stop someone? Like I said, our goal is the Final Four. If we can't stop anyone we won't make that goal, were just trying to take the baby steps necessary to get us there."
Cortnee Walton, Forward (Talk about how deep you guys are this year) "We're really deep. We're deep from 1 to 14. Coach can put anybody out there. The great thing about our team is that you put the next five in and there is no difference. So it's really great to be able to, if someone's not having a good game, pick out anybody on the team and they'll be able to step up and there's no drop off."
(Opinion on the new 10 second rule) "I personally love that rule because coaches really emphasis on defense and it's hard to play mad dog and our defense when you're out there for like 20 seconds and they're in the back court. So it's a lot easier to be able to really sit down and be able to guard someone for 10 seconds and then turn them over."
