WBB Western Illinois Game Quotes

Nov. 14, 2011

Recap | Final Stats

Head Coach Melanie Balcomb

On the 16-3 run to open the game…
“We talked about starting off at a high level. We’ve been competing in practice and we talked about carrying that over, and forcing the other team into a timeout before the media timeout. We were able to do that last game and again able to do that this game. We want to come out that aggressive. We made shots and I thought we were on the attack.”

On what to take away from a 44-point victory…
“You build confidence from this game. This was the first game that I was able to have everybody healthy and I could go to anyone on the bench, which I got to. I think all of the pieces to the puzzle are in the room. Everybody gives us something different, and I like the team that I have. I love the fact that we had one of the biggest assist games in a long time. That’s a belief in the system, in the offense, and in each other.”

On the play of Vanderbilt’s post players…
“We could have gotten it inside more. We talked about it at halftime trying more high-lows, but with the zone defense three-points shooters had a lot of time to shoot the ball and we shoot it well. We rebounded well and crashed the offensive boards. Tiffany (Clarke) and Stephanie (Holzer) got a lot of offensive boards and got points that way.”

On having everyone healthy…
“It’s good to see everybody and be able to play everyone off the bench. I felt like Gabby (Smith) got tired quick, but she still said she was fine. That’s just who Gabby is. I tried to play her in shorter spurts. Tiff’s just coming back and she gave us a great effort in the minutes she played. We play again on Wednesday and that’s a quick turn around, that’s why I sat (Christina) Foggie and Elan (Brown). I didn’t want to get them injured, they’re going have to play through things all season and we didn’t want to make it worse.”

Stephanie Holzer & Tiffany Clarke

On the fast start…
Holzer:
“I think it was great. I think it was great. We’ve been pushing really hard in practice and we’ve just been playing really well together. I think coming out here and starting off great tonight, was just a great start to a game and hopefully we can do it again next time.”

On altering the opponent’s shots…
Holzer:
“I think we did well contesting shots in the perimeter tonight they may have gotten off too many more three’s than we would’ve liked but getting out there we did a good job recovering.”

On what they gained tonight…
Holzer:
“Confidence, I think it’s a huge confidence boost. We came out and did what we needed to do. We’re going into the next game in two days, we’re ready to go, we know what we can do, we know what every player brings. We’re ready.”

Clarke: “”I think we definitely gained trust and I think this is one of the games where we’ve had the most assists out of any game we’ve played so we definitely gained a lot of trust with each other to carry over into the next game.”