|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2012Jim FosterTayler HillSamantha PrahalisINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Nebraska – 77 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Ohio State head coach Jim Foster, as well as student‑athletes Tayler Hill and Samantha Prahalis. COACH FOSTER: I congratulate Nebraska. I thought they played very well. I thought they handled the beginning of the game, kept their heads about them and kept plodding away. Executed the way they needed to execute. I think they played a terrific game. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Sam, you guys started out like on fire. But you were up 24‑11, then the wheels came off. In your mind what happened in that period of time? SAMANTHA PRAHALIS: Well, we fouled and then they just hit shots. Like they're hot. Weren't guarding them very well. And they got hot, and they were hitting everything. Q. Tayler, did anything change for you guys defensively in that time, in that period of time, the last five and a half minutes of the first half? TAYLER HILL: What do you mean did anything change? Q. Defensively they were popping up a little bit better, weren't they, or were they running their offense better, I guess? TAYLER HILL: No. We were just missing defensive assignments. Q. Sam, this is the first loss for anyone on the team in the Big Ten. Is this a particularly tough one to swallow? SAMANTHA PRAHALIS: Yes. Q. Tayler, what are you thinking I guess in terms of the next thing in line is the NCAA tournament. How do you recover from what just happened? TAYLER HILL: As a team, starting with myself as one of the leaders on the team, we have to get back to where we were at the beginning of the season. We played together as a team. We reversed the ball. It's not like that now. We need to figure out a way to get it back there. Q. You haven't shot well for a while. What's been going on there, Sammy? SAMANTHA PRAHALIS: We're not getting good shots. So we're trying to make hard shots, cuz, I don't know, you just gotta get back on track. Q. Tayler, were you at all surprised that somebody can meet your pace the way Nebraska met your pace and basically pull away from you? TAYLER HILL: I don't really think it's about meeting the pace. I just think we need to make better decisions, starting with myself in the back court. Make sure transition to defense. I think that hurt us tonight. Then our offense, we were transitioning on defense, rushing on defense, and just rushing on offense. How we played; it's not how Nebraska played, really. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach. Q. Again, you guys came out with a lot of energy, and you were messing them up and you could have been maybe a little more ahead than you were because the shots weren't falling early. Was there anything significant that changed in the last five minutes of that half to open things up? COACH FOSTER: Two things. First of all, you can say the shots weren't falling. I would question the quality of the shots, okay. I think we played at a very hectic pace. Defensively, I thought we were engaged and aggressive in making a lot of good decisions. The two things that I think happened where I think we committed three very bad fouls, and they now are going to the foul line. When they are struggling to score points. I think it could have been extended by not losing our discipline. I think we lost our discipline. When you're that energetic, you've got to be disciplined. You've got to be in the right place at the right time. And then I think when we started to commit the fouls, I think we backed off our pressure. And they could run their offense much more efficiently, because the pressure that was causing them a lot of problems early was not as significant. And a couple of them were young fouls, young players. And a couple of them were veterans that should know better. But you have to play with your head. You can never lose your head. And I don't think we had it today, had a head. I think we just played at a frantic pace. We had energy. We had energy. But not the kind of energy that leads to good offensive play. Q. How much of that hectic play is a credit to the Nebraska defense? COACH FOSTER: I would credit their defense if I thought it was their defense. I think we rushed and took low percentage/high difficulty kind of shots. With a lot of patience, one of the strengths of this team is the patience on offense. And we didn't play with that. And when you hurry like that against a team that's as potent as they are, it causes you problems. There's nothing they were doing to make us play fast. We were just playing fast. Q. How do you get refocused now in the next couple of weeks? COACH FOSTER: I think that's kind of easy. You've got time to take a few days off and we will show them a lot of film when we were playing very well and what we were doing, what made us a good basketball team at that point. You have time to take a deep breath right now and to refocus. And you get out of league play. You get out of the same officials, the same sites. The same venues. It's sort of an opportunity to go out there and challenge yourself with another venue. Q. Coach always said basically that she thought you were trying to take three people away from them, and that's why Burke‑‑ I mean, Burke kind of stepped up. COACH FOSTER: I think she played a very good game. She played like a senior who wanted‑‑ played with a lot of poise. And I think her poise and her decision‑making helped them a lot. And I thought we were doing a very good job on those three players. But to her credit she stepped up. Q. You've lost like three of the last‑‑ I don't know, lost a few now. Have you thought at all about the NCAA seeding and where you might have dropped to? COACH FOSTER: No. Just thinking 1985 and Villanova's men basketball team finishes the season 17‑10 and didn't think were going to get into the tournament and figured out a way to win six games in a row. You just get ready for what's next. You don't labor and spend time in negative areas. You figure it out and you challenge young people to figure it out. We'll provide a lot of information that will help them engage. Q. Did you like‑‑ Raven was kind of a bright spot there, especially in the second half. COACH FOSTER: I liked Raven the last three weeks. I think a light bulb went on. She's practiced better. She's become more focused, more disciplined, the things that take a while to understand coming out of high school and coming out of a league where you're looking Columbus Dispatch sometimes and you see like 108‑12 scores. If that's the league you're playing in, learning how to play serious basketball and play every possession like it matters, it's not something you snap your fingers and do. So for her to figure that out in her freshman year I think bodes well for her basketball future. Q. Do you feel like through the course of the season a lot of your role players are pretty young? Do you feel like there's been some ups and downs with her included? COACH FOSTER: Are you asking me if young people have ups and downs? Yes, we were no different than most. And you learn from that. I'll give Beach some credit in that she has learned to sustain energy for longer periods of time. Starting to do some things she couldn't do a month ago. So I think those young people are learning and understanding what their job is. Q. The technical foul in the first half, what happened and how much did that hurt? COACH FOSTER: Well, I think Sammy, on a possession, was hit in the face. And she got angry. There's no call. And I'm sure she said something she shouldn't have. I don't know what she said. But it was in anger‑‑ we were running a play, and she threw the ball inexplicitly to Ashley when she was supposed to dribble off her and make a play. I asked her why, and she said: I got hit in the face. And I think that was shortly before the technical. That's all I could‑‑ I'll see if there's more to it when I'm looking at the film. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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
|