Oct. 19, 2007
Head Coach Jerry Smith
On tonight's game:
"I am very proud of my team and their performance tonight. They played with good intensity and a great effort, which was what I was looking for most of all. I believe we were the more aggressive team and, ultimately, it was a hard-fought win with two special goals. It's not easy to come back in our sport but we've done it before and tonight was no exception."
On Pepperdine's goal:
"We made a defensive change for tonight's game that could have explained by Pepperdine scored so quickly. We moved Chioma Igwe from center back to right back and we hadn't had the opportunity to play with that scenario this week. We are still tinkering to find the best line-up and as I said in the beginning of the season, it was going to take us longer this year given our situation. But it was my decision to make the change and I believe our players were unsure of where to be at the beginning. But after that goal, it was all us and we played great."
On the importance of tonight's win:
"We're back on track now and our goal is to win the conference championship. Every conference game is extremely tough and you don't want to be 0-1 at the start of conference play. But what I told our players after our loss last weekend to San Diego was that the last time we lost our conference opener was in 2004 and we lost to San Diego. However, by the end of that season we won the conference championships and went on to the Final Four. We have a very determined group and that was evident with tonight's win."
On Kiki Bosio's goal:
"Kiki's goal was a tremendous individual effort and was really a dribbling clinic. She fought her way through many defenders on that play."
On Brittany Klein's goal:
"There was terrific timing. It was a set play that we have practiced many times and has many players involved (Snell, Bosio, Reynolds and Klein). There was truly an amazing effort done by everyone and Brittany just finished it off."