Feb. 5, 2015
Vanderbilt vs. Ole Miss2/5/2015
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
How they rallied in the second half…“Making a decision to just make a change. We got to the point where we got down 16, and we wanted to show character and heart. It didn’t become about winning and losing anymore, it became about who we wanted to be. I think they let go of the result, and focused more on what we need to do. We had a smaller line up in, became more aggressive, trapped more, got out of our zone and knew we better get the ball back and get in transition and attack, and get to the free throw line. That’s pretty much what we did.”
On Jasmine Jenkins…“She’s trying to distribute the ball as a point guard. But I think tonight, and as we’ve seen in the last couple of games, she has been given that 15 foot shot and she can make that. That’s her shot. And I think tonight, she was just a little more confident and when she’s confident she can knock that down.”
On the locker room environment after the game…“We just talked about not getting to high or to low. We are young so we have a tendency to go up and down, and we just want to stay consistent. We told them, it’s important to enjoy winning and remember what this feels like. So enjoy it tonight, but 8 o’clock tomorrow, it’s back to class and back to work. We have to prepare for another game Sunday, again another great opportunity to get to be a ranked team, if you want one. We need to keep getting better, because the first 26 minutes were not very good. And to beat a ranked team on Sunday, you better not come out like you did in those first 26 minutes. You are not going to be able to do what you just did to a better team.”
On all of the turnovers in the first half…“And then we only had 4 the whole second half. We were on pace to score about 45 points again too, like we did at Mississippi State. Getting to the free throw line and attacking. But we’ve been working on trying to get more possessions and trying to stop giving up so many positions. And I think we did a much better job with that in the second half.”
On Rachel Bell…“Her biggest challenge has been defense and rebounding and physicality. You know, she was bouncing off of people. But tonight, she got at least one rebound, she tried to take a charge, and those things are huge. She’s growing, she works very hard at practice. We always knew she could score, but she’s also starting to score within the offense and with what we are doing, she is getting more comfortable. She has always been a confident scorer, she definitely knows how to do that. And we have a lot of players that know how to do that. In the first half, I think everybody was going really fast, including Rachel. In the second half, she made a change and slowed it down on offense.”
On tonight’s free throw improvement…“One of the things we talked about coming into this game was that we scouted ourselves. I think that it is real easy to keep scouting everybody else. I think they were really surprised that we are on the bottom of the league. I kind of gave them a mirror, and showed them where we stood in the league and everything. One of the things I think they were shocked by was that they were last in the league in free throw percentage. They are second in the league for field goal percentage. There was just some really interesting stuff, we are last in the league in turnovers. They didn’t realize how bad some things were and it really helped us at practice, to take care of it. And it really helped us to look at ourselves instead of pointing the finger and looking elsewhere. We’re really working on accountability, which with young players is tough. I think they were so much more accountable, for their free throws. They’re free, and you have to take them and you have to believe. Nobody else can believe or make a free throw for you, it’s your belief. We also teach a lot of things to help them make free throws in their routine, but it’s really about confidence. And they were confident enough to knock them down tonight”
Rachel Bell:
On their comeback…
“We just came together. We talked about it in the locker room and after last game, how we need more heart and more mentality, and the want to go get it. I think we came together. I don’t know the minutes on when we came back, but we really came together with energy and that really helped us out a lot.”
On her transformation this year…
“Coming from high school was a big transition. What I did in high school is not what I’m doing now. I had to adjust to the team, new roles, and right now I think we all have come together and we know our roles more. Right now I am just playing my role, whatever it is that night. I’m trying to focus on defense right now. I’m just getting whatever comes to me, and we all know our roles now, which is really helping us out.”
On their momentum coming out of this game…
“It gave us a lot of confidence. We’ve lost the last couple of games and we were really down on ourselves. This was a big win and a big comeback, and it really built our confidence, which is really going to help us.”
Kristen Gaffney:
On their comeback…
“It was just about attacking them more, putting them on their heels, making them speed up, making them create turnovers. I know that coach mentioned that we had 14 turnovers in the first half, and in the second half we only had 4, so we switched that up. Just being able to attack them more.”
On the final basket…
“We came out of a timeout. Our goal was to hold the ball until 12 seconds, run a quick hit, run five out until then. Twelve seconds hit, we get in our quick hit, it was supposed to be a high-low from me to Morgan. They were crowding Morgan. Tia [Faleru] was on me tight, so I had a good hit and a one dribble drive.”
On getting her moment after sitting out for almost two years…
“It was really cool, but my teammates helped me through everything, in practice and with self confidence. I was out for two years, and my teammates helped me a lot, always being in my ear and telling me that I’ve got this or that I could do that. Knowing they have my back is a big help.”
On their momentum coming out of this game…
“We need to continue to work in practice. We can’t get too high. This was great, but it is just another W in the column. It doesn’t get an exclamation point, but neither do our losses. We just need to go hard in practice, and get ready for the next game.”