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WNBA FINALS: MONARCHS v SHOCKAugust 30, 2006John WhisenantDETROIT, MICHIGAN: Game One COACH JOHN WHISENANT: Well, I guess my opening statement is that I'm tickled to death that we got home court from the Shock, but that's only one game, and we've got to win two more, somewhere. And, you know, we did some things well. I thought we shot the ball well, scored 95 points. You know, we had some defensive breakdowns at times, but overall we played defensively pretty good. I know Cheryl and Katie kind of got to us some. But we're happy. We're happy we won. Our goal was to win a game here, and we don't want to quit at one, and we know Friday will be a war. They will come at us with all their ammo. I'll take any questions. Q. You guys just beat them up in the interior, grabbing rebounds away from them, going up strong in the post, was that part of your strategy to maybe exploit the Shock a little bit by using your strength in the interior? COACH JOHN WHISENANT: Well, they are the leading rebounding team in the league and we only outrebounded them by two. The second half, they outrebounded us. So we got to them there early, and that got us a lead because in the first half, we got some put-backs. But we're the leading offensive rebounding team in the lead, they are the leading overall. I guess we both kind of live on that. We work hard on our rebounding. I mean, that's part of defense. Defensive rebounding is part of defense, offensive rebounding is part of offense. So we work regularly on those things, and we hope they help us win. Q. You beat L.A. out in L.A. to win the thing last year, you started out in Connecticut and took their home court away, how much of that really helps your confidence coming into a series like this when you have home court disadvantage? COACH JOHN WHISENANT: Obviously a lot. It was our goal. We weren't certain we would do that, but on the other hand, we've preached to our team, since I've been there, mid-2003 that if you guard people, if you play defense, it doesn't make any difference where you are, you make it hard for them to score at home or on the road, and don't let this team in particular, don't let them get to you on the boards. You've got a chance to win, and then you just have to figure out a way to score. And tonight, we shot the ball well. All nights the ball doesn't go in. Offense is something that just trying harder doesn't necessarily make it better. Defense, trying harder, helps a lot, and rebounding trying harder helps a lot. So we try to always try harder, and that's been our sales pitch to this group, and it's been good to us. Q. Cash and Riley weren't factors tonight, did you do something to take them out of the game, or did they just have off-nights? COACH JOHN WHISENANT: We don't ever really double-team anybody. Our whole defense is about guarding the same way ever since training camp. We don't change anything. We make few adjustments. We do highlight good players, but they have got a whole team full of good players. If you pay too much attention to Katie or Cheryl, well, Swin will get you or one of the other good players. So we didn't do anything in particular. I thought our defenders on those players played well, and our four off of them were always in the right help position, which is important in our defensive scheme.
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