Post-Game Quotes
January 15, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 15, 2009
Washington Head Coach Tia Jackson
Opening Statement: "I can tell you right now, there is no group of people more disappointed than we are right now. Our Achilles' heel continues to be rebounding. On the front of defense we're doing a decent job but we're not keeping teams off the offensive boards. The other thing that has a tendency to hurt us a little bit is when we force teams into all these turnovers and then we can't capitalize on them. We're going to spend a lot of time making sure that we're able to attack, making some live game situations in practice so that we're able to capitalize when we cause teams to have 20, 25 turnovers a game. Our full court pressure was doing a great job but we weren't able to turn around and capitalize on it. Unfortunately we can't harp on this too much because we've got to turn around and get ready for the Beavers who are playing some pretty good basketball right now."
On Improvement After Bay Area Losses: "I think offensively we did some good things getting some lay-ups for ourselves but again could not capitalize. One of the game plans we had going in was that we wanted to attack their bigs. They had some bigs that couldn't handle our post players when they faced up. We got their starting post player in foul trouble and they brought in their reserve. Not until the second half could we really go at her and really look to score. We shot a fairly decent percentage in the second half but it took too long to turn that around. Taylor Lilley had a fantastic night here and we cannot let teams feel so comfortable in our house."
On Lack of Three Point Shooting: "We spent a lot of time with execution yesterday, a lot of time making sure we were focused on their specialty plays to get their threes. On the defensive end, we were shooting the lights out. Maybe we just shot too much yesterday and got them all out of our system. We were shooting fantastic against the men yesterday and for some reason could not bring it tonight."
On Motivation After Three Big Losses: "I'm still working on that but I think that one of the things we have to make sure we don't do is hang our head and we need to continue to believe in what we do. That's the message I just left them with because individually we have some very good players. Collectively those team things, the defensive things, making sure that we're seeing the options offensively, we've got to do a better job of those. They did a pretty decent job of penetrating on us, we'd help but then that next line of help didn't seem to be there."
Junior Guard Sami Whitcomb
On season getting easier: "No, it's not. I think we were really excited coming into this game, coming back and playing in front of our fans out home. We were really excited about feeling more comfortable offensively and I was certainly hoping our shots would drop. That wasn't the case. We got to start getting away from letting that affect our defensive focus and our defensive energy. And I think that was the case late in the second half for us."
On what needs to change between now and Saturday: "You know, again, I feel like a broken record but it has to be defense for us because clearly offense is not our friend and we can't rely on that, as good as scorers we have with Laura and Michelle and other players. We have to come in every game and expect to miss all of our shots and crash hard because we are not getting second chance opportunities. And similarly, on the defensive end, we have to not let them get easy shots. I mean, we kind of let Taylor Lilley - she's a great three-point shooter - but we kind of let her do that and let her get hot. We gave them too many extra shots. It's tough to win in those situations where you're getting out-rebounded. So we have to come in with a defensive focus and an energy and make it our priority."
On outside shooting:"I usually don't go into any game thinking I'm going to drive this game or I'm going to shoot my game. But my first four shots didn't fall. I felt like they were pretty good looks but yeah, they weren't falling. So that was the time in my head where `We've got to score,' or `I got to get to the line. Get people in foul trouble.' Anything to score. Not really trying to force it, but at least look to other areas where maybe we can get it done. So that's when I was pretty much like, drive it."
On shots falling in practice: "Yeah, they really were. And I think that's why we were excited about this game. We talked about having a chance to redeem ourselves. But I think we were really excited about the chance to play at home and our shots falling. We still believe in each other and ourselves, but it certainly would have helped if our shots were falling to reinforce that. It's tough, but we'll come back and try to do the same thing on Saturday and hopefully our shots will fall then."
