Feb. 3, 2001
Santa Clara Head Coach Chris Denker
On the game
"It's very disappointing to beat them by 20 three days ago and come back and lose. I didn't think our performance was very good. We got outrebounded, which was critical. But the bottom line was we lost the game at the free throw line. They made 23 free throws to our eight. A 15-point differential, that's pretty hard to overcome. Especially on somebody's home court. We didn't shoot the ball particularly well from the perimeter. If we had, we might have been able to create a little bit more space, but we didn't. Down the stretch, I thought the girls did a decent job, coming up with some big defensive plays. Again, they scored at the free throw line, they didn't score on baskets. The one basket they did score, we answered with a big play by Kim (Sorenson). We had some kids play a lot of minutes... we might have just worn out toward the end."
On the post players scoring 26 of 30 first-half SCU points
"We want to try and get the ball inside, but the free throw battle is one we'd like to win. We get the ball to the basket and try to get easy shots and if those aren't available, we kick it out and have open jump shots. If they were doubling down, in this case also tripling, and we were fairly efficient from the first half, shooting 50 percent from the floor, 26 points came from the post players and we don't get any free throws, it was very difficult. You can't get any easy baskets, it's kind of a grind. We played very good defense on possessions. We had three shot clock violations where they didn't even get a shot off, but we gave up our fair share. They had 17 offensive rebounds, which was very critical, and probably in the end, did us in."
On heading to Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount next weekend, the two teams SCU is tied with in the WCC standings
"It doesn't get any easier, let's put it that way. I'm sure both those teams are vying for us and having us beating them at our place. You go on the road and nothing's easy. Those are going to be tough, especially as they're back-to-back on Friday/Saturday, so everything about that trip is going to be difficult and we're going to have to see if we respond to the challenge."
Santa Clara senior Jennifer Glysson (16 points, 11 rebounds)
On the game
"Basically we just didn't get it done when it came down to it. I know I missed three free throws and others missed them too. They outrebounded us. On Wednesday, we outrebounded them by 10 and today, we didn't get it done on the boards.
"Give them credit, but we didn't do the little things. We didn't rebound and we knew when they got o-boards, that's how they got three-point shots."
On the post players scoring 26 of 30 first-half SCU points
"Last time against them, they double-teamed us a lot, so we practiced a lot the last few days on the double on passing it to the other post or going baseline so they couldn't double us in the middle. I think it worked out good in the first half.