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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2010Aisha JeffersonSuzy MerchantBrittney ThomasINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Iowa – 59 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with an opening comment from Coach Merchant, then we'll go to the student-athletes. COACH MERCHANT: I thought it was a hard-fought game. It could have gone either way. I think certainly the difference for us was their rebounding. They scored 19 points off of offensive rebounding situations, and we didn't put ourselves in position on our end. I think that's the first time that we've had spells during games where maybe we haven't rebounded that well. But that was an entire game where I felt like we just could not get a defensive rebound for whatever reason. And you have to give Iowa credit for really hustling after them and taking advantage of maybe us not doing the job and chasing down opportunities and then taking advantage and scoring, 19-4 there. And I feel if we had cut that down in half we would have won by five or six. They did a really good job of rebounding it. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Aisha, what is it with Iowa that's given you such problems these last two games? AISHA JEFFERSON: Well, the first game it was basically just fouling them, getting them to the line. I think we did a good job today containing them on defense. But a big part of our offense is creating offense from our defense. And we weren't really defensive rebounding, and they scored about 19 second-chance points from rebounds. So that wasn't a good thing for us this second game, but I think it was definitely two different things from each game. Q. Aisha, could you talk about your offensive performance today? This was your season high? AISHA JEFFERSON: I think it was mainly because they were playing the 2-3 zone and the middle wasn't really guarding much and I felt like it was a good chance for me to just be aggressive there and also help my teammates get involved, because it was really hard to guard the middle when you're playing a 2-3 and you've got great post players down low and good shooters on the outside. But it's still disappointing, because I didn't do a total job today. Q. Brittney, what do you guys talk about after the game and what's the team feeling like right now? BRITTNEY THOMAS: I mean, we're definitely disappointed. We came in here with a goal of taking the whole thing. To be one game away it's frustrating. And just everything that Coach and Aisha said, it really came down to rebounding. I think we did a good job defensively to keep it a low-scoring game. Iowa is known to -- they're going to score; you've got to answer them. That was the type of game it was. The score seemed like it was the game that we wanted, but they started getting the O board at the right time and putting buckets in. Q. Brittney, there were just a ton of turnovers today on both sides. What led to that? BRITTNEY THOMAS: I think a bunch of them were in a lot in the first ten minutes of the first half. And I think both teams were trying to go really hard and both teams were getting a lot of deflection. I think it kind of washed out because both teams were turning it over a lot. I think it was just the energy and it's live and survive and you've got to win. I think once both teams settled down, the turnovers settled down as well. Q. Aisha, if somebody told you coming in you would hold them to 59 points, would you think you had a pretty good chance of winning the game? AISHA JEFFERSON: Our team goal every game is holding opponents to 54, and confidence with our defense as the backbone. That was one of our biggest keys. Iowa can score six points in 30 seconds, and holding them to 59 points is great, but most of those points came off of some rebounding. But it wasn't good enough. And we got outrebounded and that's the game right there. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. Questions for Coach. Q. You guys seemed to struggle offensively a lot. Was that their zone? COACH MERCHANT: No, I actually was glad -- I mean, zone we were kind of slicing and dieing there, I thought the last ten minutes of the first half, you know, then they obviously didn't play it again. So they have been relying on a 2-3 zone 80 percent of the time that they play for obvious reasons. And I thought we did a really good job of attacking it. We just didn't have that good of a shooting night. Kal was really off. Lykendra didn't give us her offensive rebound putbacks like she can. Jas, as good as she was yesterday, didn't put the ball in the basket. Normally we have three, four scorers, and today we just really had one. It's hard to win when you just have one kid feeling good on the offensive end. I look at that a little bit, and I thought we had good opportunities that just didn't fall with the right people taking shots. Q. Suzy, did you have a feeling about Aisha before the game? Was she showing anything that she might have a breakout game, and can you talk about her performance? COACH MERCHANT: I thought obviously it came at the right time. We were struggling offensively and she kept us in it, from the arc, from the inside, high post area, scoring on the block. I think she was just really feeling it. We wanted to make sure we kept her in as long as we could. I mean, she's kind of tough to manage sometimes with her situation with her injuries and whatnot. But I thought she played her heart out. I thought she did a really good job on No. 22. That kid was 5-for-6 yesterday, and we had some pretty grave concerns about her shooting the basketball against our 4s. So I thought it was a really -- I thought she played both -- the rebounding piece, everybody could have been better. Q. What do you think about the NCAA tournament at this point, seeds? COACH MERCHANT: I guess probably a lot is going to depend on how the other conference tournaments play out. I feel good about where we're at. I think certainly we wanted to get to the finals and have a shot at winning this thing, which maybe could have improved our seed. But I still feel like we should be a very good high seed. Our record against top 50 teams and certainly the way we finished was very, very strong. We gotta get Al back healthy and we'll have time to do that in the next couple of weeks. Q. Did you get more or less than you expected out of Allyssa tonight? COACH MERCHANT: You know, it's hard to gauge. I mean, she played. So that was more than I thought. I really didn't think we were going to be able to play her. She couldn't get through a shoot-around. I didn't think we were going to play her. But she kind of fought through. The problem is it probably limited her ability to do some things out there. But having her presence at times was good. We just really came down to defensive rebounding there. And I thought having her in there would help us. But I just look at Morgan Johnson as someone that really -- I mean, she got five offensive rebounds and they had three team defensive rebounds, all three of those, if you look at the tape, were probably her keeping it alive. And I don't think our 5s did as good a job as we could have on keeping her off the boards. I was proud she played and fought through some things. But I think we got more out of her than we felt we could. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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