Jan. 27, 2008
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb:
On Vanderbilt’s defense:
“I have to get credit to my staff. We really had a good week of preparation. They’re probably thinking me because I gave them time in practice. We generally spend a lot of time on offense, especially because I feel we’re behind offensively this year. We don’t have the weapons we’ve had in the past. Not playing Thursday and having extra time, we really worked on our matchup and our man. I think we were so aggressive. They executed the defense just how they did in practice all week. My assistants had them ready defensively and that was really fun to watch.”
On the play of Jennifer Risper:
“I’m really proud of Jen’s effort and her attitude. I put her in a different role this week. I had her be in the middle of the press breaker. She basically played inside and Christina (Wirth) played outside. She embraced it. She worked as hard as she could at what I asked her to do. It’s a great teaching lesson. She bought on and nothing but good things happened to her.”
On the team’s hustle:
“I felt like we outworked them from the start. They’re really good on the boards. On the first four possessions, they got four offensive rebounds. I was pulling my hair out. After we settled in, we competed with them and we ended up outrebounding them. I thought if we outrebounded them, we would win this game. That’s hustle. Rebounding is an effort skill.”
On Jence Rhoads:
“She’s playing with a lot of confidence. She’s making it look easy and that’s what a good point guard does. She’s starting to understand what we want. Each game she builds more confidence. She’s a lot more aggressive which is getting us better shots. She’s attacking a lot more, taking the pressure off her.”
Ole Miss Head Coach Renee Ladner:
On the game:
“Vanderbilt just schooled us. I have all the respect in the world for Coach Balcomb. She took everything away that we did well. They made us panic in that wide, spread out zone and our kids did not handle that well. I’m the most disappointed about not playing fundamental basketball. I never ask my kids to win but I ask them to come out and do exactly what we need. I saw a lot of fear in our faces and we panicked and that ultimately was our demise because we would just throw the ball away. Vanderbilt played exceptional defense and when we threw the ball away, they went down and scored. We knew they were a well versed team on both ends of the floor.”
On getting off to a slow start in the first half:
“We have a tendency to not play well on the road. We’re still looking for that leader to take over the floor and we put that on our freshman and for the most part she’s done pretty well. On nights like this and against teams like this, it’s very difficult for her. I think we’re going to be ok. We can not continue the same things that we’ve been doing. That’s what hurt us in the non-conference schedule and it has carried over in the last couple of games we’ve played.”