Postgame Quotes: Washington Vs. Southern
December 20, 2011 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 20, 2011
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Washington vs. Southern
Alaska Airlines Arena
Huskies 64, Southern 56
Head Coach Kevin McGuff
Opening Statement
I told the team that I thought we had learned this lesson before, but if you don't show up with great concentration and effort, you leave yourself incredibly vulnerable. Regardless of the opponent. And to Southern's credit, they played very hard, I think they gained a lot of confidence early. They were playing hard and we weren't, and they were taking advantage of it. And that's completely to their credit especially to the first 15 minutes of the game. It's a little disappointing because there were stretches where we played hard and executed on both offense and defense and we were fine. We just didn't do that for anywhere the amount of minutes that we need to continue to be successful.
On the tempo of the game
We had kind of figured out that when you show up, you have to compete for 40 minutes to have success. Certainly the way we started that doesn't appear to be the case, but it's nice to be able to learn that lesson and hopefully win the game. Going forward, let's hope that we don't have to deal with that again.
Mercedes Wetmore
Sophomore guard
On the start of the game
We just didn't come out ready to play. We needed to come out ready to play and that didn't happen. Towards five minutes till the half we pulled together and got ourselves back a little bit.
On Southern star Kendra Coleman
We allowed her to get really hot. She was making every (shot) which was fortunate for her, but the last eight minutes of the game she wasn't able to make some of those difficult shots that she was making.
Charmaine Barlow
Senior guard
On the game overall
We got a bit of a scare. Because McGuff doesn't care about the score. He wasn't us to come out and play hard regardless of any team we play. We did better in the second half, but if we come out like that in the Pac-12, there's no coming back from that.
Southern Head Coach Sandy Pugh
On what was encouraging from her team during this game
Well, I think the biggest thing was, when they took the lead, we didn't put our heads down and we kept battling. We're a very young team, we have a lot of freshmen and we're trying to incorporate them. Our starting point guard is out and she won't be back until mid-January, so we really had our struggles at that position. I felt like the freshmen did a good job of taking care of the basketball, however, we just never got into a solid rhythm on the offensive end. It was one of those types of games, a very physical game. I thought we just didn't make the shots we needed to make down the stretch. There were a couple of layups, point-blank, that didn't go. We took a couple of ill-advised shots. The biggest thing with this team, I think, is that we need to figure out who needs to be shooting at critical moments. I think the wrong people took shots at critical times. But, like I said, we're a young team and we're going to continue to develop. We lost six seniors last year, so I'm proud of the effort.
On what they most need to work on going forward
I think [we need to work on] control. We just need to understand when to take shots and the quality of the shot that needs to be selected. I thought we took a lot of bad, ill-advised shots. I thought we stood around too much, watching the person with the basketball. But they're going to continue to get better. They're a great group of kids; they listen, they want to work, so I can't be mad.
