Jan. 27, 2001
Santa Clara Head Coach Chris Denker
On a season-high 10 three-pointers (game record is 13 three-pointers, set against Gonzaga last season)
"Last Year, we just got rolling and hit a few threes. This year was more of necessity because they zone a lot. In fact, I think they zoned us all night. It was just sort of a game-flow-type thing tonight. We never went away from trying to get the ball inside but against the zone, but sometimes shots are just going to be there. Our guards were ready to shoot and did a pretty good job."
On limiting Gonzaga's Jessica Malone to 11 points tonight
"She's a very good player and I think in four of their five wins, she's had more than 25 points and so I made that very clear to our team that she could not go off, she could not have one of those nights and fortunately we forced her to make some tough shots."
On moving into first place in the WCC Standings
"This was a goal for us. We're not quite at the midway mark yet, but we wanted to be in first place at the midway mark and we've got San Diego back-to-back next week, so that'll be a big week for us. But we're really happy where we are with our time. I felt like, if it's possible, we made improvement between the Portland game and this game. We had a really hard practice yesterday, even though it was the day before the game. Normally, we'd go a little shorter. We didn't yesterday, we went really hard. I think we got their attention back a little bit. They came our really hard. I thought this was a fun game to watch. They were really aggressive and flying around. At halftime, we have seven steals and some deflections and I think it just generated a fun game."
On the defense
"Part of that was, we wanted to establish an aggressive mindset. So it's not so much that we're a pressing team, per se, but we just got our kids playing aggressive, getting out in passing lanes and getting tips and deflections. It generated transition, which, against their zone, we thought we could get some easy baskets if we could get a transition layup now again, or something similar to that. They do a good a job defensively and have held some team's down. We were able to able to generate some fast-break baskets and some open court stuff and I think that really helped establish our win. A lot of time our game starts with the defense. Really in any sport... you're going to win with pitching in baseball... look at the Baltimore Ravens in the SuperBowl, it's defense. We've really tried to get that across to our kids. In our system, it's a team defensive game. It's not just Annie (Garrison) blocking shots, or Caroline (Gruening) shutting down somebody. It's a team deal for us."