Dec. 16, 2004
Wisconsin Head Coach Lisa Stone
Opening statement: "A great victory for our team. We once again showed some character down the stretch against the most offensive-minded team we've seen. I don't know if I've ever coached against a team that has taken 34 three-point shots. They're going to do well. They play hard. They get up in you. It was like a Horse game * it was like playing Horse out there for a while * trading baskets. They made some tough shots, but so did we. We answered back with some great perimeter play here."
"Our two freshmen that put up 52 points between the two of them is something you'd like to see on a nightly outing, but we're realistic about things as well."
"Some things that step off the stat sheet are the rebounds; we out-rebounded this team 51-28 and only had 16 turnovers. What a great game for the fans. It was trading baskets back and forth, and if that can't inspire people to come and watch us play, I don't know what will. It's great to be undefeated at home * we're on a little bit of a streak right now and hopefully we can keep things going."
"Our game goals were to score more than 75, which we did, and hold them under 65, which we did not. So obviously it was a shootout. Those were some tough shots, and when you live and die by the 3; you get up by 9, and I think we got up by as much as 11 in the first half, and how quickly things can turn. Maintaining intensity, finishing the game * I'm not so concerned about the score as I am proud of our team for hanging on."
Santa Clara Head Coach Michelle Bento-Jackson
Opening statement: "Obviously when you give up 104 points it doesn't show much on the defensive end and you don't give yourself much of a chance to win a ball game. The two things that were glaring were rebounding and obviously free throw attempts by Wisconsin. Felt that they got second opportunities in the rebounding and the result, unfortunately, ended up often times in us fouling, which put them on the free throw line."
"We got more uncontested shots and I felt like they were packing in the paint a little bit, but they knew coming into this game that we're a three-point shooting team and there's no question about that. That is one of our strengths. However, in the second half, I thought we relied solely on the three-point shooting. Some of it was given opportunity due to penetration, which was good, but we've got to get ourselves to the free throw line as well and we've got to get the ball inside. We've got to get some production on the inside and we've got to get ourselves to the free throw line."
"Coming in we knew that pretty much every position was going to go through either Rich's or Anderson's hands, and that was one of our focus points going into the game."
