Feb. 16, 2014
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
On scoring…
“I think we’ve got a lot of players just hiding and they’re now being exposed. They’ve got to make plays on both ends of the floor. When (Christina) Foggie is out, she can’t win the game because she’s sitting on the side. You’ve got to make plays when your scorer isn’t on the floor anymore.”
On the tough fight at the end…
“You don’t want a game to come down to the last possession on the road. When it does, it’s not going to be in your favor.”
Mississippi State Head Coach Vic Schaefer
Opening Comment…
“Praise the Lord and go Dogs. I’m super proud of our kids. I just love how competitive they’ve become. I love how they fought in the second half and how we set the game back twenty years the first half offensively. They made some adjustments at halftime, and when we came out in the second half I thought we threw the first punch. I thought Breanna (Richardson) was sensational coming out of the locker room, and then down the stretch Martha (Alwal) scores 14 of the last 21, and was just incredible. She put us on her back, and really obviously made a game winning shot. Jerica (James) and Katia (May) continue to do a great job at point guard. Jerica comes in and makes two big shots again. I tell you what Jerica has become even better than what she has been. She’s been helping us defensively on the press. She’s really doing a great job of denying the in-bounds pass, and that’s something that she needed to work on. Our point guard play is the reason we’ve won 17 games, or it starts with that anyway. Jerica and Katia are certainly a big part of that. It was a tremendous win, obviously beating a top-20 team that had not been beaten here in a while. I don’t know when the last time was we beat Vanderbilt. Obviously last year this team beat us by 51 points, and to be able to come out today and compete was great. Really again, we played miserable the first half. I mean we absolutely played really poorly, and I take full responsibility for that. I didn’t have them ready to play and the second half I thought they had themselves ready to play.”
On this win as an “upset”…
“Well this is a top-20 team. I think they’re really good. I mean they’ve beaten some really good teams like Tennessee and Texas A&M. I mean they’ve beaten some really good basketball teams.”
On trying to go inside more…
“That’s the first thing on the board. We wanted to establish an inside game early on. We talked about Breanna and Martha fouling, scoring, or both. Martha is not only sick, she’s probably got bruises all over her because she just takes the pounding and at the end of the day sometimes it’s hard for her to get where she wants to get. She just keeps battling and competing and that is all you can ask a lot of times.”