March 15, 2002
Head Coach Chris Denker
Game Comments: "We're extremely disappointed to loose. I feel that we kind of gave it away. We just made too many critical mistakes down the stretch. I'm not big on moral victories, but I felt that out girls played well. It was uncharacteristic to shoot this poorly, in practice we shot rather well. I felt that we showed that the West Coast Conf. is a very good conference. We had a RPI ranking of 7 that was the highest in conference history. LSU scored 29 pts inside of six feet, which shows how good their penetration was. We got plenty of good looks, we just couldn't get them to fall. I think that the girls may have been surprised to how open they were. LSU made plays down the stretch and we didn't that was the biggest factor. We kind of let down after the fist six minutes than regained our composure. We also haven't played in a while, that could have been a factor in our poor shooting to begin the game."
Comments on Caroline: " I told that if she passed up a shot she was going to come out. That's how much confidence I have in her abilities."
LSU Head Coach Sue Gunter
General: "They (Santa Clara) were every bit as good as we expected them to be. There's no question it was a war from start to finish tonight. In the first half, we did as much as we could and I think we played as well as we could. I thought (Santa Clara) came out and played really well in the second half. Somewhere in their dressing room they found the three (-point shot). I thought they just shot the ball exceptionally well."
LSU PLAYERS
C Aiysha Smith
On end of game: "The coaches tell us we need more offensive rebounds. I was doing whatever I needed to get them myself or hit them to my teammates and it worked in our favor."
G Temeka Johnson
General: "There weren't any surprises tonight. We didn't underestimate anybody because we knew they (Santa Clara) were a good team. We have no time to waste for our day's rest. This game is over now. Compared to the SEC Tournament this rest is very important. We haven't even paid attention yet to the fact that we will play Colorado. We just wanted to get past Santa Clara. We had no idea what the outcome (of CU vs. SU game) of that game would be. Santa Clara was trying to make us tired, but we have learned to suck it up. When we see other teams send in fresh legs, we have to pretend that we have fresh legs. We never put ourselves in a situation to say it is over with. I felt the altitude tonight, but in the words of Coach (Sue) Gunter, 'suck it up.' We pulled away with a win tonight so I guess it was not too much of a factor."