Michigan State-Indiana State Postgame Quotes
11/24/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 24, 2006
Michigan State Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie
Opening statement...
I'm really impressed by our team. Twenty-eight assists is an awful lot of assists to get as a team at this time of year. That's something that we need to absorb and want to recreate. The 41-29 rebounding margin is another area that we're very pleased to see. There are a lot of different things we can take from this game. We're going to celebrate them and wake up tomorrow a hard-working team ready to prove what we can do against Houston.
On individual efforts...
I thought Victoria Lucas-Perry stepped up and did a lot of nice things, with rebounds, assists and she obviously did great things shooting wise as well. She was the complete player and she wants to be that player every night. I thought Rene also did some really nice things for us in terms of her running the offense and distributing the ball. I thought Alyssa also did a lot of nice things and stayed aggressive. I thought our best defender all game was Katrina Grantham. She really was the glue person for our defense and tried to get through screens and locate shooters.
On breaking Indiana State's press...
I felt good about our press-breaking ability and I do think that if you break a press over and over again, you can kind of puncture the excitement a team might have. We were definitely trying to get the ball all the way to the baseline to get behind them because in transition we had seen on film that they don't always get all the way back. I thought our guards and our posts did a good job trying to move the ball and not over-dribble on that pressure because if you dribble too much, they've got an excellent press and it wouldn't have been good for us.
Indiana State Head Coach Jim Wiedie
Opening Statement...
We realize that we are not going to outscore everybody. We've got a lot of confidence after our first three games. They are a much better defensive team, especially when they press. We shoot a lot of threes. I thought we had some good looks but I thought Michigan State really did a good job of eliminating any inside game that we had. Most of our shots were coming from the post players around the foul line area. Only when DeHaan was out were we able to get some shots around the basket. It was more of their defensive effort that caused us to take those shots.
On preparing for DeHaan...
Well we didn't do a very good job at Iowa. Our biggest girl is 6-2. We just try to keep her far away from the basket so the shots are a little bit tougher. There is no way we can simulate that. We need to make the game up-tempo and try to make them take quick shots.
