Louisville-Maryland Women's Basketball Postgame Quotes
December 01, 2016 | Women's Basketball
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Louisville Head Coach Jeff Walz
(On if getting back into the game wore out the team)
"No, no, it's a lack of effort. I mean when you get back into the game and you take a two-point lead and you can't figure out a way to sprint down the floor and guard somebody, I don't know what to tell you. Unfortunately, I really don't. And if we don't figure this out in a hurry, it's going to be games like this where we can't close out because we're not tough enough to sprint the floor and come up with a stop. Now the sad thing about it is we came up with like six stops, seven stops in a row starting the fourth quarter, but then when it becomes crunch time, you take a two-point lead, God forbid that's when you have to get one, and we just refuse and it's our upperclassmen, unfortunately."
(On if he saw a difference in the team from this game to the last one)
"Well, I thought we fought a lot better in this game. I thought we competed, I'd say for about three quarters in this game. In the second quarter, we got undisciplined, went crazy, threw the ball away, just took bad shots, did not make them defend us. When we made them guard us, we actually did some really good things."
(On what causes the lapses in the game)
"It's just a little bit of focus. It's concentration. It's knowing what you can do. It's like I always tell them, when you're open, there's probably a reason. They're not guarding you. So if you catch it and you're wide open, you might really want to think twice before you shoot, because they want you to and we've got a few of them that don't quite understand that yet. Like, they catch it and they're open and they're shocked. Don't be shocked; they aren't guarding you. So God forbid, don't shoot it. Asia Durr took 27 shots tonight, which she could've taken 20 more for all I care because she works at it. She's our hardest worker, she spends the most time in the gym, and I've got no problem with it. I've got some of them that just don't quite understand the level we're trying to play at."
(On Cortnee Walton's play tonight)
"I thought she did great. I thought she worked her tail off. She's a competitor, like I said, there's about three minutes there at the end, where we shoot and Cortnee's the only one going to get a rebound. I promise you that's not what we told them. That was not the plan. The rest of them just didn't think it was important enough. That's concerning. It's really concerning because we've got Kentucky coming in here on Sunday that if we do the same thing, you get the same result."
(On priorities in game plan versus Maryland)
"We were trying to not let Brionna Jones get on the low block, but that obviously did not work out very well. Just step around her, in front of her. When they get you that low, then you've got to front. Then [Shatori] Walker-Kimbrough did a fantastic job. She played her heart out. She came up with big baskets when they needed them. She gets to the free throw line when we're up two to tie it. Those two are special players. [Destiny] Slocum, I had the opportunity to work with her at USA Basketball, she's just a gym rat. She loves the game and when you love the game, it shows. She's just out there, she's going everywhere. It's one of those where you can't question her effort, because she goes hard. She might not make the best decision every time, but it's not because she's not playing hard."
(On if players know they aren't getting back on defense)
"Howie, I really don't know how to answer that question, I really don't. I mean if someone is running past you, and you don't know they're running past you, we got problems."
(On if that is an exhaustion thing)
"It's kind of like if you're going 60 and the speed limit's 55 and you get pulled over, and you're like, 'What did you pull me over for? I was only going 60.' Well, no kidding. It's speeding. Like so when they run past you, and you can't figure out that you're not running, boy, that's not good."
(On why that happens)
"I don't know what it is. Heart. How about heart? How about heart?"
(What's the difference to fight to close out the game?)
“You've got to have a will. You've got to have a will. There's sometimes they're tired too. Walker-Kimbrough played 40 minutes. [Kristen] Confroy played 39. They're tired too, but who's got the will? Like I said out there on the radio, we just live. Right now, the generation of kids that are coming through, everybody gets a damn trophy. OK, you finish last. You come home with a trophy. You kidding me? What's that teaching kids? It's OK to lose. Unfortunately, it's our society. It's what we're building for, and it's not just in basketball, it's in life. Everybody thinks they should get a job. Everybody thinks they should get a good job. No, that's not the way it works, but unfortunately that's what we are preparing for because you finish fifth and you walk home with these nice trophies. Parents are all excited. No, I mean not to be too blunt, but you're a loser. We're losers, we got beat, so you lost. There is no trophy for us, but unfortunately the way everybody … the way these kids are brought up today, there is a trophy for it because nobody wants anybody to have hard feelings. Nobody wants to get their feelings hurt. Unfortunately, in the real world, I'm not sure how it is with your all's jobs, but with mine, if you lose enough, you get fired. That's just the way it is. I'm trying to explain to our kids, like hey, I'm trying to prepare you for the real world because when you go to get a job, there's competition. What are you going to do to stand out? But unfortunately we're not preparing these kids, before they get to us at least, to be ready for that. You know, when you play 3-4 AAU games in one day, you lose three of them and then you win the last one and everybody goes home happy. You're 1-3. I know it's a long time ago, but doggone it, the days we played, when you lost, you went home. There was no friendship bracket. You know, 'Let's go on the left side to the friendship game so everybody can play two more games.' No you went home. You went home a loser, then you worked at it if you wanted to be good. You figured out a way, 'Hey I want to get better.' So for us, we've got to figure out a way. I've got kids here who probably wanted to play more. Well that's great. Well you know what you're not going to if you don't come to practice and start playing better than the ones that are playing because, again, it's not equal opportunity around here.”
(How much of that heart and will can be imparted by the coaching staff and how much of it has to come from within?)
“Well I mean, we're trying, I promise you. It's my personality. I hate to lose. See I personally … If you don't hate to lose more than you like to win, you've got problems. I expect to win. Coaches jump up and down when they win, no I expect to win so why am I going to jump up and down. But boy I hate losing, absolutely hate it, and if you don't hate it, that's a problem. If our kids aren't sick and if it's not in the pit of their stomach on Sunday, I've had enough. Then we do have serious problems. Now, they're… if we sprint back and if we'd gotten in defense and they make shots, they make shots. Walker-Kimbrough made a few really tough shots. There's nothing you can do, good shots. But when you give them a layup because you're not sprinting back, well that's a problem. You're not going to win every game I'm not foolish enough to think that. OK, I'd like to, but we're not going to, but the effort has to be there. The execution has to be there. If you lose because you miss shots that's fine. Now losing because you missed free throws is a different story. I've got Briahanna Jackson and Asia Durr going 1-for-3 at the free throw line. I've got two guards going 1-for-3 at the free throw line. It's unacceptable. It's a big problem. Cortnee [Walton] goes 0-for-2, and I think it was like a two or three point game at the time she went 0-for-2. You just can't do it. I'm not calling any of them out. It's just the facts, like it's facts. See this is the problem everybody's going to be like, 'Man, you called your player out.' No I didn't. It's just facts. It's on the stat sheet. You know it's okay people. Like I've got to sit here and go home tonight and figure out how are we going to fix this because it's on me. It's on me. I recruited these kids so it's on me, and I've got no problem saying that. But, damn it, what we're doing is not just status quo. We're not going to come to practice and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. I promise you that. So we'll see who wants to be here because it's work. We're at a point right now it's work. You've got to come out here and you've got to work to be great. That's instill in these kids is it's not just about winning basketball games, it's about winning in life. I want them to be great. I don't want them to just settle to be average. Why go to college and spend all that time studying to be average? I mean who wants to do that? Paul might have, but the rest of us don't.”
(On how they're preparing for Kentucky)
"Tomorrow at practice. We start tomorrow at practice. We're going to get after it. We've got to get prepared. We've got to be smart, because that's playing a bunch of minutes, so I'm not going to kill them, but we've got to be mentally involved. We've got to be mentally on point and know exactly what the game plan is going to be for Sunday, no doubt."
Asia Durr & Myisha Hines-Allen
(On getting back into the game and the crowd)
Myisha: “Yeah, it's always exciting when you have home court advantage, and we have amazing fans here, so they were able to enjoy the game. We just need to execute a lot more. I feel like we played really hard, but we weren't able to get the win.”
(What happened down the stretch that didn't lead to a win?)
Myisha: “Defensive stops, we needed to get stops and we were unable to do that. But I'm really excited for the direction that we are heading, because from last game, I don't want to say we gave up, but I feel like from this game we fought the whole game even if we were down. We still fought to get that lead back.”
(On 3-pointers this game)
Myisha: “Well you know 3-pointers are not my specialty, I'm adding it to my game so I can't really depend on a 3 and that's what I'm starting to do, so I just have to get back to what I'm best at and that's pushing to the basket. The 3 will fall eventually so I'm not really worried about that right now.”
(On the game plan against Maryland)
Myisha: “They had great post players so it was a battle. One thing all our post players take pride in is getting stops and scoring on another post player so I think that's what it was, just a pride thing. And just trying to go at the best post players because she's an All-American and we wanted to see how we compare against her. She's a great player and I'm glad we got the chance to play against her.”
(On Briahanna Jackson diving to the floor for the ball)
Asia: “That gets up hype, we need that. Coach Walz, he talks about it all the time about diving on the floor. You know that gets us ways to score and also it gets the crowd too, so I think we need to continue to do that and just work harder.”
(On what the locker room was like)
Asia: “Well we all hate to lose, competitive, things like that. So we just have to work harder we can't be satisfied now. We just have to continue to work and that's what Coach Walz is trying to stress you know we have to work harder we can't be happy with how we are doing now. We have to find somehow, some way to play harder.”
(On facing Kentucky next and getting the win.)
Myisha: “Oh, I was thinking about it at the beginning of the season. It's always the game you mark on your calendar and are ready to play. I haven't beaten them in the last two years. The first year I played, you know, we thought we had the game. We have to play 40 minutes when we play Kentucky, and that's something we have to stress to the freshmen too. We may be up with 35 minutes left, but that last five minutes – I mean Kentucky is a good basketball team, so they are able to get back in the game and get a lead. We have to stress on the freshmen that we have to play 40 minutes to beat Kentucky.”
Maryland Head Coach Brenda Frese
(After a great second quarter, Louisville got this really close and took a two-point lead on you and then they took off after that. Can you just describe that final sequence when you won the game?)
Coach Brenda Frese “Yeah, first of all, let me making an opening statement. I'm sorry. It was a big win for us tonight to be able to play such a great team like Louisville. But I think both teams have even bigger goals for what they're looking at in March. But I can't say enough for Louisville's team. Watching them on film, and obviously playing them, they are an extremely tough team. They are very competitive, really, really physical, but I thought our young team with our veterans really grew up tonight. So I thought obviously we had a great start to the second quarter. Is that what you asked? In terms of our play, we got a lot of energy with what we were doing, we had a balanced attack, and we battled foul trouble most of the game. But specifically when you talk about the fourth quarter, they punched us. You know, an 11-0 run in the fourth quarter to take the lead. I just thought we showed great poise, toughness, composure down the stretch in terms of shooting the ball really well from the free throw line.”
(Brenda, normally veteran teams are composed down the stretch, but you have a lot of freshmen and newcomers. Your thoughts on how they handled, particularly Destiney, who wasn't particularly having her best game until the final two minutes, until she put the team on her back?)
BF: “Yeah, that's what makes Destiny so special. She can erase what happened in the past and just stay in the present. You know, man, she was just tremendous in terms of just the fearlessness and the confidence we were able to just feed off of. I thought our vets, Shatori and Bri, really led us in the first half, so we could settle in and see all these new players from game-to-game. Kaila Charles took until about the third quarter to be able to step up. Kristen Confroy gave us great minutes, her boards. Fraser off the bench. You're going to see that with our depth all season where different players being ready when their number is called.”
(Shatori, these games here seem like they're always close. You were part of the last one, too. What was kind of the feeling being back in the building knowing you were going to win again here?)
SW-K: “It was good. Like coach said, I thought it was a great team win. We got challenged down the stretch and I thought we handled it very well, starting with Destiny. I thought she handled the pressure very well and she stayed poised. And I thought we followed her lead down the stretch.”
(Destiny, what's kind of your thought process when you're going to the line there in the clutch to get that three-point play. Take us through that last couple minutes there for you)
DS: “You know, it's just playing basketball. I mean, I've been in this moment before. I have two veteran players on our team that really led us. We knew what to do because they told us what to do. And you know, it's just playing basketball. And in that moment we needed to lock in, play defense, have good offense, and I think that's what we did.”
(Do you personally have to have a short memory from maybe some of the mistakes you made earlier and down the stretch? Did you just put that behind you and get the win?)
DS “Yeah, that's all I care about is getting the win. I couldn't really think about that at the moment.”
(You came down and got the lay-up and did the whatever, is that just something that you do to kind of quiet the crowd? They were going pretty nuts at the time)
SW-K “They were getting really loud, and I think that was when they went on their run, so yeah, I kind of felt the need to do that. I feel like I needed to lead them, the crowd as in them, to quiet down a little bit because we were still here and the game wasn't over.”
(Did you get concerned when they took the lead there in the fourth quarter at all?)
SW-K: “No I wasn't concerned. I knew they were a great team going in and great teams go on great runs so I knew we just had to take one play at a time. We couldn't look at it as a 10-0 run. We had to look at it as one play at a time and coming down the stretch each play matters, each pass matters, the little things matter, communication matters. So we just had to lock in and I knew we would be fine.”
(For Brenda, talking about when they took that lead how did you really try to calm this team down? How did you get them to regroup and refocus at that point when the momentum seemed to be swinging?)
BF: “The timeout mattered. I thought we got fatigued in that stretch. We were playing really hard and in kind of some heavy minutes with our play so I thought the timeout helped us regain our strength back, our voice and our composure to be able to settle in.”
(Coach, Jeff Walz questioned his team's competitiveness, competitive spirit, heart at the end of that three-minute stretch, what did you learn maybe about your team in that last three minutes after Louisville took the lead?)
BF: “Just this team never quits. That's why I love coaching them. They're so competitive and I thought both teams competed. It was an incredible game here for December 1st and a game where you're going to see both teams late in March. They're a really good team but for us to come on the road and battle like we did and again, our team really grew up with so many new players. Again, I love the fact that they're fearless, they're okay if they make mistakes and they just want to compete.”
