Dec. 4, 2009
Bowling Green 66, Vanderbilt 60
Dec. 4, 2009
Postgame quotes
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
On what went wrong:
“We didn’t show up and I have no idea why.”
On taking the lead:
“I did not feel good about the lead. When we got the game close, we could not make shots and we couldn’t get stops. I was not comfortable at all when we took the lead.”
On the missed three’s:
“I didn’t feel like we were ready to shoot. We had open shots at times but couldn’t make them and we didn’t set good screens.”
On missing Jordan Coleman:
“She has been getting better every day and she has been so steady. She gets a lot of offensive rebounds and steals for us and we missed her energy to start the game. She has been starting because of her defense and energy on offense. She has been taking shots that she can make and has been playing within herself on offense as well. We missed her a lot and we didn’t have enough time to adjust. Right now we are struggling to find enough people to play all positions.”
On getting ready for Western Kentucky:
“I would like to do a walkthrough to prepare for Western Kentucky. We have a lot of people playing a lot of minutes and if our players don’t learn from this to have a sense of urgency to do the little things we’ve been asking them to do then one practice isn’t going to change that.”
On getting back into the game:
“We all of a sudden got a sense of urgency on defense and we forced 25 turnovers. We certainly didn’t have a lot of those in the first half. I think we were lured into thinking that teams were just going to miss shots and that’s what has been happening in our past games but tonight, Bowling Green wasn’t going to miss shots. Our game-plan in the second have was to take away their three-point shooting. We didn’t stick to the game-plan in the first half. We had every opportunity to win but we didn’t get the big stop or hit the big shot when the game was close.”
Vanderbilt player quotes
Point guard Jence Rhoads
On start of the game:
“We came out flat and I think we took them for granted. They were obviously ready for us and we weren’t ready to play.”
On late lead:
“I thought we were going to win it. We need to work on getting better in close games, but we shouldn’t have buried ourselves in the first half and that’s what it comes down to.”
On Vanderbilt’s mistakes:
“We definitely weren’t doing the things we were supposed to be doing. Coach gave us a plan and we didn’t stick to it.”
Bowling Green Head Coach Curt Miller
Opening Statement:
“This is a fantastic road win for our program. I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the Vanderbilt program. Melanie is an elite coach and has one of the best teams in the nation. She’s one of the top five coaches in America, in my opinion. I look forward to coaching against her, as a young head coach. This is a huge win. We have an incredibly difficult road schedule this year and those tests really helped us tonight. We knew Vanderbilt would bring pressure in 2nd half. We found enough plays to get to the finish line, resulting in a fantastic win for our program. “
On defensive presence:
“I thought we had trouble with physicality at Ohio State. We were the aggressor and we went against them from the start. We wanted VU to go 2 by 2 and not let them get easy shots at the three.”
On last five minutes of the game:
“We had some physical play against a big conference school. Despite the turnovers, we never quit fighting, even when we lost the lead. We took the timeout when Vanderbilt took the lead because wanted to call plays and calm the girls down. All we had to do is out-execute them. We kept our composure. We didn’t need to be a better team for 40 minutes, just the better team down the stretch.”
Bowling Green player quotes
Guard Traci Pontius
On tonight’s win:
“It’s the biggest win of my career, beating a top-15 team. This really gives us confidence going into a long road schedule. We learned a lot from the road games before this and certainly from tonight.”
On three 3-pointers in three minutes:
“Our ball movement worked well. We shifted the zone and Coach (Miller) shifted us to work around the holes in their defense. I was just grateful to have such a strong start.”
On Vanderbilt run:
“We had three or four back-to-back plays where we had turnovers, but we just kept ourselves together and played to the end.”
