Nov. 15, 2009
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
On having three freshmen on the floor:
“I have to say that I wasn’t nervous because they weren’t nervous. I didn’t feel like any of those three freshmen had been nervous in any of the two exhibition games, so I was very confident putting them in. I knew I could put them in quickly and I love what they are giving us. It’s a calm confidence with a lot of energy.”
On defensive pressure:
“The goal was to shut down Erica Prosser and Alex Ross. I think they went 5 for 23 and that’s what we are pleased with. To shut a team down that’s very good offensively to 54 points, you have to take those two players out of it and I thought we did a really good job with that.”
On importance of Jence Rhoads:
“She is very important. Jence is a really good basketball player. She is an awesome basketball player in practice but to go to a game, she would rather distribute it and not make mistakes and not turn it over. What I’m trying to get Jence to do is what she did tonight. Her assist-to-turnover ratio was 10-to-1 and she shot it ten times. She made people pay for not playing her. She was aggressive all night. She is a key for us.”
On executing offensively:
“At practice, we’ve been spending a lot of time on defense because we recruit offense and coach defense, and it takes them a while to figure out where to be and how to play defense. In high school, the star scorer doesn’t play a lot of defense so it takes a while sometimes for them to learn where to be and to learn our defensive plans. I think its tougher than offense, and we’re not real simple on offense either. We have a lot of things in already and I think they have been very quick learners. So to go to the bench that early in the first game and to see us run that offense, and it actually looked like it was supposed to look; I was very pleased with that.”
Vanderbilt Guard Jence Rhoads
On having three freshmen contribute strongly:
“They’ve been working hard in practice and they earned it. I think they were ready to play today and brought their “A” game. There’s always room for improvement, but I was impressed.”
On breaking her career high in assists:
“I didn’t know I had 10 assists until the end of the game. I was just looking for my shooters and they knocked them down today.”
On being more aggressive offensively:
“I’ve been taking more shots in practice and that’s made me a lot more confident. They were slacking off on me a bit and I was able to knock some down.”
Vanderbilt Forward Tiffany Clarke
On first college game:
“I had a lot of fun. We had a lot of energy and played well. I didn’t expect to lead in scoring, but I just really pushed myself.”
On playing strong defense:
“One of our key points was to play great defense and dictate the ball. I feel we just executed what our coaches wanted us to and defended hard.”
Lehigh Head Coach Sue Troyan
Opening Statement:
“It was a tough matchup today. Vanderbilt has an incredible team and we couldn’t stop them in the paint or on the perimeter.”
On coming back after halftime:
“It’s hard to come back from an 18-point deficit, but I think we responded well. We started strong in the second half, but we couldn’t build on that or make runs past that.”
