Nov. 8, 2014
Recap | Box Score | Jarrett’s Photos 
Vanderbilt – Coker Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Melanie BalcombOn the freshman class playing their first game:
“I think there’s a little bit of everything, and that’s what I love about the class. There was length, athleticism, scoring, and what you don’t know a lot about is the mental aspect. How quickly can they learn a system? How quickly can they read a defense? College defense is really different. In high school, you guard your player. We have to teach them how to play off-the-ball defense and take charges. We’re going to be working on those things this week as well. If they have a good heart–and that’s what you saw with some relentless, attacking basketball, being aggressive, and having that confidence – we can do a lot of things with that. We just need to focus on the process because of how young we are.”
On Rebekah Dahlman returning from a blood clot for her first game in 11 months:
“I can’t even tell you. That’s the last thing our players said, how good it was just to get Becca back on the floor. What happened last year was tough for all of us, especially her, and you see she’s the happiest kid in the game, she’s the happiest kid on the bench. She just can’t wait to get out there. I thought about it in warmups when she got to go out on the floor and she was just beaming, just smiling all over.”
On steals and transition offense:
“We’re focusing on deflections, high hands, spearing on the basketball, and trying to create offense off our defense. I think we did a good job of that.”
On using five guards and flexibility in the lineup:
“They’re all interchangeable this year. We’re really not focused on position, and that’s one of the things that I think is gonna make us next level. Everybody’s playing more positions. Rachel [Bell], Christa [Reed}, Audrey-Ann [Caron-Gaudreau] all know two through five and Morgan Batey knows one through five. We’re going to be very difficult to guard if we can be more interchangeable, and that’s what next level basketball is.
“That’s how you get further in this game. You’re constantly putting people in a mismatch situation, and I think that we have that kind of skill level and size at those positions to be able to do that. That’s what you see your UConns and Notre Dames doing, and that’s where we’re trying to get to, even in the recruiting process. We call them hybrids, and we’re getting them out of their comfort zone by forcing them to play things in practice. Injuries early help you to do that, Kendall [Shaw] was out, Marqu’es [Webb] was out. All of a sudden you’re saying, we might have to have a five guard lineup. We’ve been to Sweet 16s and won SECs with five guards. It’s really helped us to prepare so we have multiple different lineups that we’ll be able to match up with other teams and take advantage of those things.”
Rachel Bell:
On how long she has been dreaming of playing college basketball:
“Ever since I started playing basketball I’ve been in love with it and wanting to go so far. It is exciting, I’ve been waiting for it for eight years now. It’s super exciting and I was ready to go, I think we all were.”
On her directions from Coach Balcomb:
“There were team goals. She didn’t really tell me anything in particular, but we all came out ready to go and it was exciting.”
On being the team’s top scorer for the day:
“It’s all on my teammates, they get me the shots. They give me the opportunities to make those shots and I want to thank them for that. It’s all my teammates. We all had different roles. I think different games it will be different (people), I guess just whoever is on fire, whoever is hot. Our teammates will get us the ball and that will be who our scorer is for the day.”
Morgan Batey
On the youth of the team:
“It’s very refreshing. This is my third first exhibition game. You kind of get into a rhythm and get used to it, but having new faces and a new young energy out there really ignites us older (players). Younger people usually bring a lot more energy and a fresh mindset, and I think that’s what they did. All of them came out aggressive, and just brought energy on both ends of the floor.”
On the energy of the team:
“We had some goals within our team today to get deflections and hustle plays, get in the passing lane. It’s been a huge focus for us this year, just not relaxing, not giving up easy looks, so I think we took that to heart today.”
