Nov. 30, 2008
Vanderbilt 72 – Virginia Tech 43
November 29, 2008 – Memorial Gymnasium
Attendance: 4,012
Melanie Balcomb, Vanderbilt Head Coach
On tonight’s defense compared to the previous night against Davidson:
“It was mostly our overall pressure. We played more three-quarter court, full court, trapping, pressuring the basketball, and forcing the turnovers that we forced and the mistakes that [Virginia Tech]made. We dictated today. We took them out of their offense and tried to force them to play one-on-one and exploited their players’ individual weaknesses. This is the best execution of a game plan that we have had so far this season.”
On the Va. Tech’s pregame confidence level as a previously undefeated team:
“I know they (the Hokies) were really confident coming in. The Michigan game prepared us for this game. You don’t want to lose that game, but if we hadn’t lost at Michigan we may have lost today. You saw a whole different team because of the changes and the way we recovered our attitude and our effort in practice. The team responded really well to the preparation we did for this tournament.”
On the halftime discussion:
“We talked about doing more of what we had done in the first half. Taking what we had done for the first 20 minutes and continuing to do the same for the full 40 minutes, and not letting up. I can’t say we did that because it became very unaggressive and unattacking midway through the second half. We talked to them in the huddle over and over, and I think we got better and did it very well.”
On how tonight’s play will correspond to SEC play:
“It depends on who we’re playing in the SEC, and it will depend on what the team wants to do. This team wanted to run and they score a lot of points in transition, so our press was really for tempo. It was to slow down the opponent’s transition and attack. It was executing the game plan, and my staff had a very good game plan for this team. It’s all about choosing the right press.”
