Nov. 18, 2001
Santa Clara Head Coach Jerry Smith
On the Broncos' second halves
"A part of it is when you travel, you're legs get taken out from under you a little bit and you're maybe not as enthusiastic as you would be if you were playing in front of your own fans at home and so, I think that's typical of teams playing on the road. Secondly, when teams play against us, they've very energized to play against us. They probably use most of their energy in the first half staying with us, they run out of gas a little bit in the second half and we have a chance to take over. Often times when teams play against us, they're worried about us scoring a bunch of goals against us, so it's kind-of a moral victory if the score is 0-0 at halftime, which these last two games were. That's kind of dangerous, they feel like they've accomplished something, but it's only halftime. So maybe they don't come out with as much energy, or maybe they don't have as much energy because they've used so much in the first half, while our team tries to maintain a steady level of energy. What looks like more energy from us in the second half is really just in comparison to our opponent having less energy."
On Syracuse
"They're a very well-coached team, well-organized team, disciplined and hardworking. They weren't going to put together a whole lot of dangerous attacks but we knew it would be tough for us to get behind and get dangerous shots off. It wasn't until the second half that we were able to do that."
On Dartmouth, SCU's next opponent
"Like this weekend's competition, Dartmouth's another team we don't know anything about. I'll have to find out what I can about them. We were to play them in the regular season, but that didn't happen. It'll be nice to play at home this weekend."
Santa Clara Freshman Forward Leslie Osborne
On her goal
"I chested it, and knew a girl was coming on me quickly, so I volleyed with my inside left foot to the far post. I knew the keeper thought I was going to go to the near post. I concentrated a lot more than I did in the first half, when I missed."
On going home for the third round
"I think we're going to pick it up and play a full 90 minutes on our field. We just proved this weekend that we deserve home-field advantage until we take it all the way to the College Cup."
On the team's slow starts in both NCAA matches
"We need to pick it up. Against a good team, we could have easily been down at halftime. We know that, but we're nervous. We need to forget that if we lose, we're done, and just play patient, like we do in the second half."
