Jan. 30, 2011
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Howell’s Photo’s 
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
On the change in lineup…
“She (Angela Puleo) earned it in practice. We had a week to prepare. She earned the start just like Tiffany Clarke earned the start. I was going to start who earned it in practice this week. We had a long week after a poor performance at Kentucky and the lineup was going to be changed.
It really had nothing to do with her (Angela Puleo) shooting; she can shoot. It was about her rebounding and defense and doing other parts of the game that we’ve been trying to stress to her. She’s doing them now and we sure could use her 3-point shooting. It’s nice to have her in the game.”
On Ole Miss’ defense…
“They were in zone and when teams are in zone your shooters are going to get shots. You can get a 3-point shot against a zone anytime, I don’t care if it’s a great zone or not. What I think was really good was Steph (Stephanie Holzer) being such a threat from the high post and that opened up our shooters.”
On Vanderbilt’s defense…
“We played defense. It was a different mind set. It was nothing different strategy wise. It was our effort. Defense is an effort skill. It’s not really a strategy. You guard your player. You take away their strength. We played smarter, we played tougher, and we communicated better.”
On Elan Brown…
“That’s what she (Elan Brown) brings is defense, rebounding, and hustle plays. And that’s what she did tonight. She’s just got great length and was able to challenge a lot of shots and get her hands on a lot of deflections, and that helped our team force turnovers.”
Angela Puleo
On practice this week…
“I think our whole team has a different mentality just because we gained confidence the whole week in practice. Practice is huge with how you prepare for a game. I think it had to do with all the things leading up to the game.”
On her 3-point shot…
“Part of it is my teammates getting me in perfect position for a good quality shot. I’ve been building confidence in practice. I’ll go back to that just making 3’s against the guys in practice. But mostly its teammate’s getting me the ball in good position with my foot down and set and getting a good look at the goal.”
On what they did differently against Ole Miss…
“I think we probably dug in a little bit more defensively. We built a big lead against them last time and I know we talked about we weren’t going to do that again. And, I think rebounding, Elan had a double-double. She did great. We beat them on the boards and that’s their strength. You take away a team’s strength, then, you’re sitting pretty good.”
Elan Brown
On playing 32 minutes without a foul…
“It all comes from practice. Our focus was toughness, checking out, and communication. We really took that to heart, checking out, took more pride in that this game and our toughness on the boards. When you get a good position it’s kind of hard to foul.”
On the win…
“It’s great. It gives us a great feeling but we can’t get satisfied because that’s when you kind of go downhill. We’ve just got to keep building on this one and keep getting better.”
On Vanderbilt’s outside shot…
“Outside shooting always helps because that brings the defense out and then that opens the middle up for high post players. So Ang (Angela Puleo) knocking down those threes definitely helped Tiff (Tiffany Clatk), and Hannah (Tuomi), and Steph (Stephanie Holzer).”