|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WNBA FINALS: MERCURY v SHOCKSeptember 8, 2007Paul WestheadDETROIT MICHIGAN: Game Two KAREN KASE: Coach, thanks for joining us, if you want to go ahead and start with an opening statement again. COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Well, it was nice to get a win. Now we go back home and hopefully we can continue the play that we just had today. But at least we have kind of evened the score and you can only take advantage of what you do. But at least on paper, we now have home court advantage. But that's only if you take advantage of it. But we're happy. It was a good win for our players. Diana Taurasi kind of stepped up and said, "Well, I think I'll bring my game with me today." And she did. Q. Do you think Diana was motivated by the talk that somehow she struggled against Detroit? COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Yeah, I don't know. Someone asked me had I talked to her about it and I said no, we have had no conversation, because -- and my response even yesterday was that D's going to show up and play her game and it's going to be more than ample about 98 percent of the time, no matter who the opponent is. So if there is a game or two during the season or the playoffs where she struggles and gets in foul trouble, there is no pattern here, folks. So she's a very competitive athlete and she's going to come play her best and sometimes like all of us, it doesn't work. Q. When they decided to go small and in the second quarter, they didn't have Braxton or anyone out on the floor, did you feel like maybe they were playing into your hands ultimately? COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Not really. We tried to make some zone adjustments anyway and we thought we had done that. Whether they had their bigs in or not. Changing lineups doesn't really affect us as much as other teams because our goal is to get that ball and push it as fast as we can. So if you push it against bigs, push it against smalls, we're really doing the same thing. We had nice get outs today and a nice game by Kelly Miller who she wasn't distributing the ball she was rebounding the ball. Q. What about Tangela Smith? COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Tangela Smith, well the only thing she did wrong was she made two threes in a row that's why I took her out. I said, "You make two in a row like that you come out." I had already subbed for her and it was a 20 second sub. So she looked at me. "Okay, I'll make three next time." She had a great game. She had a presence about her. Everyone talks about, like, well you have playoff experience people, Tangela Smith is a playoff experienced person and she kind of showed it tonight. Q. Could you please talk about what you did do differently defensively inside to stop them. COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Basically we stayed with our rover defense. We did that in the first half and played a little man for a minute. We tried to jam it down into the paint more than we did last game. So the rover, Diana Taurasi, who does a lot of this instinctively, we just kind of said to her, see if you can slide down the lane and get under and get inside rather than playing more outside. And she did it superbly. So I mean it wasn't like we reinvented a lot of things, we just simply tried to stop that plethora of inside scoring that was exhibited on Wednesday. Q. Could you talk a little bit more about Kelly Miller, just the energy she brings and will the little plays she makes throughout the course of a game? COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Yeah. Well, our players, if you ask them, everybody talks about well who is most valuable, who is your most important player. Our players would probably say Kelly Miller is their most valuable player. Because as you see, she does all of those little intangibles over and over and over again at about a hundred miles an hour. Where others even on our team seem to tire, want to catch their breath, she's motoring the ball, ahead of them, saying, "Where is everybody?" But, and at the end of all of that, someone takes a shot and she's gone down the lane to rebound it, to get an offensive rebound and will be the first person back on defense if it doesn't work. So I don't know how you get much better in effort than Kelly Miller. KAREN KASE: Thank you very much, coach. COACH PAUL WESTHEAD: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|