Dec. 21, 2014
Recap | Box Score | Green’s Photos 
Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
On in the second half sticking with the five on the floor:
“Well, I think that’s what’s been really tough is in ten games, and I was telling the team this yesterday I think we have had five, six different starting lineups. There is no rotation, and I think we have to get one. Part of that has been because of injuries, and people in and out of the lineup. But at some point we had a huge issue at Marquette with our effort, and just flat out not working hard enough. I went with a new lineup, and I decided that we were going to go with the kids that were playing the hardest. Then they started playing together. I thought it worked. I felt real comfortable with the rotation. They were pushing each other, pushing themselves. Effort was not an issue. We were winning the effort skills. We can’t be praising effort that should be a given, but that is what gave us an opportunity to win this game and I think that is what we need to do more of. But hopefully with those kids that have been giving us that effort now we hopefully get back after Christmas, and get and get some of our injuried players back that we need”
What needs to be worked on to fix the turnover issue:
“It’s just being disciplined and attention to detail. I think that we have had turnovers in all different areas. Today at halftime we talked about our turnovers being a lot of them were inside. You don’t touch the ball inside and when you do they called a lot of travels. We were fumbling the basketball and they were calling a lot of travels. A lot of them have been offensive fouls on the inside. Three seconds on the inside, and then the other ones have been in transition going to fast with the basketball. You know, I really think we need to pin point where our turnovers are. The other place they are is when things get close. When we get back after a seven point deficit and we catch up, and then that’s when we get silly again when we get tight. That’s when we threw it out of bounds. I think all that stuff will be solved when we get a rotation, and they are more comfortable with knowing what each other is going to do. There is not a lot of winning teams that are playing everybody on their bench like we did at Marquette. That’s the reality of it. That doesn’t happen unless you have a platoon system, and that’s not what we do here.”
Positives taken away from this game:
“I hate to say that the biggest positive was our effort, but the biggest positive to me was the rebounding. I think whenever you can rebound and dominate 40 to 29. We are a team that doesn’t offensive rebound well. Now, we did miss a lot of shots and we shot 4-13 from three, but to get 20 offensive rebounds. That’s a lot for a Vanderbilt team, and the teams that I have coached. We usually shoot the ball better, and don’t need so many offensive rebounds but I liked our aggressiveness on the boards. Giving the second chances and second opportunities and giving more possessions than we have generally gotten, and I think if we keep that but start to execute a lot better then we will make more shots and that will be something we will want to go to.”
On the return of Heather Bowe:
“I think Heather has worked very hard through adversity, and I think Kristen Gaffney has worked really hard with adversity through two ACL’s. So, when you come back off things and come back to the other side as we call it then they’ve gained strength. Through that strength they have built confidence. So, at times I thought they looked really good together especially when the other team went zone and they were able to attack off the dribble, and to not be at such a size disadvantage so they could face up. They will keep getting better. I think Heather just needs to relax and take a breath, but they are both very determined and I like what they did tonight.”
JR F Heather Bowe
On determination and improvements:
“I want to work hard out there and I think I need to work on working smarter. Morgan [Beaty] is a good leader she works on working hard and smart. I’m trying to take after her on that by focusing on that more.”
On cutting down second half turnovers:
“I think we were more patient on offense, but I think we struggled and lapsed on defense. We had a few more defensive lapses that we didn’t necessarily have the first half.”
JR G Morgan Batey
On playing more at point guard:
“It was very different at first, and trying to get used to it. But I’ve been playing a lot of positions since last year. I was playing guard and post so I got really familiar with the offense. So I guess being in the point position nothing really changes now, it’s just more of helping everybody else get to positions. This is the most point I’ve ever played in my whole life.”
“I played like secondary point in high school, because I had a pretty good point guard teammate. But if she got in foul trouble or something I would play point. I don’t know if you call it point, maybe just bringing the ball up the court, but I really like it though. Jasmine Jenkins did a great job today. She’s obviously way more familiar with it and when she came in she did a gray job getting us into stuff.”
On cutting down second half turnovers:
“I think we just got into our sets more. We were a little more patient; running through out sets and getting to everything. When we got second opportunities off our offensive rebounds we just got even better looks the second time around. But I think the main thing was patience.”
