Feb. 10, 2001
On the team's fifth come-from-behind game in 10 WCC contests
"I told the girls at halftime, half jokingly because I'm getting tired of it, `Well, we come from behind several times before, I'm losing count, but at least I know we can do it.' The funny thing is, it was a little bit like last night--the first half was really not indicative of what we're capable of. Pepperdine's a really good team and they came out and got after us. And we had to respond. The key, to our kids' credit, is that they did respond. I told them at halftime that I don't care if we win or lose, but go out there and represent yourselves a little bit, prove that you can play and that you're worthy of being here. In the first half, we really didn't do that. We played okay, but they were taking the fight to us. I thought in the second half we were really aggressive. We played very good defense, we established a good tone and we rebounded the ball extremely well down the stretch and we were able to come out with a win."
"I wish I knew why we keep doing this. I told them before the game, and it didn't work at all, `Okay, it's halftime and we're down by nine. Let's go.' They just kind of laughed and didn't do anything about it. But it is something we're going to need to address as coaches why we're getting off to these slow starts. Maybe it's a lineup thing, or maybe it me with some of the calls I'm starting with offensively. But as a coaching staff, we're going to reevaluate all of that to get us off to a better start. But the key is how you do at the end of the game and luckily we're doing okay that way so far."
On two key runs in the second half
"It wasn't really plays we were running, it was just them deciding, `Hey, I'm going to be a force to reckon with. I'm going to be tough to guard.' Those scores were off of skeleton plays we were running, but they would go and branch off and attack. And that's stuff we work on a lot, but it's tough to get them to do. They're so disciplined and such good kids that they want to run everything right and we're trying to tell them, `Go make a play. It's okay. If you feel like you have a read, go make it happen.' They were able to do that tonight."
On the game
"There were a couple of keys. One was rebounding. We outrebounded Pepperdine, which was huge, because we gave away some size tonight. The second thing was Pepperdine is a good defensive team, and they tried to establish that early and they did. Again, part of it was due to us not being really aggressive and attacking. But a lot of it was due to them. They were playing good defense. But in the second half, we didn't kind of wait around and see what they were going to, we decided to play. It showed. We shot 57 percent in the second half. The free throw battle was also key. We wanted to get the ball inside and be relentless in doing that, whether it be off the drive or the post and we were able to do that and get into the bonus. We went 10 of 14 vs. their two of two.
On the lead in the WCC
"We've got the lead, but there's a long way to go still. A lot of things can happen. We have two home games next week against Bay Area rival teams, one of which (Saint Mary's) got us last time, so we want to make sure we take care of business. We're really trying to stay as focused as we can about that, but what we understand is, by sweeping Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine, two very good teams that are only a game back of us right now, that we have tiebreaker on both of them and we have the hammer, so to speak. If they go and beat somebody, that works for us too. We feel good about that."
