Post-Game Quotes
11/23/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
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Michigan State head coach Suzy Merchant
Opening statement...
Some days it's just a struggle, right? Obviously we struggled and won, but it just wasn't our best performance. I was a little worried about coming off of a big, emotional game like Notre Dame and trying to settle yourself in. If you're going to be a good team, you need to be able to get the job done the next night. I think some of our lows were a little bit of a Notre Dame hangover, and we need to let that go and make sure we're ready to play. We did some good things defensively. I think offense was our biggest challenge.
On Aerial Powers...
The good thing about Aerial, what I think makes her special, is her short term memory. She gets a little amnesia out there, which is a good thing because she can let stuff go and still attacks and has that mindset. On the other side, sometimes she can keep doing the same thing over and over instead of learning from her mistakes. I'd take her any day. She plays hard, she does more for our team than obviously scoring the ball. She got to the foul line. She had five assists. Like you said, she was a double-double with 10 defensive rebounds. She's just a special talent. I'm sure she's frustrated with the way she played tonight compared to the other night [against Notre Dame], but that's part of the growing process and learning as well.
On Cara Miller...
Cara is someone that we feel is one of those really traditional role players that every team needs. She doesn't really want to score it; she doesn't want the glory of all that. Really, her biggest gift is that defensively she wants to guard somebody's best player and be a good rebounder. I think if she does those two things, she can help us. She was disappointed in herself, I think, against Notre Dame with the way she played, maybe more against Eastern than against Notre Dame. She's smart, she's intelligent, she communicates; she plays really, really hard and does some good things for us. We need her to play minutes off the bench for us in order to be successful. I liked her game and her play tonight because she rebounded as well as defended.
On Tori Jankoska...
I think the one thing with Tori is that she's kind of figuring out a little bit about shot selection for her early on. Some of it is really that she's been trained for so many years that people box-and-one, triangle-and-two and all of that stuff. Any shot you could get was a good one. It's better to have her taking a shot than someone else on her high school team. Last year, I thought she made some growth. We might've had some depth there that it wasn't always on her, but now that she's stepped up into that leadership role, she's really going to be significant for us. I thought she really showed maturity tonight. I've seen her come off pin-downs and just ready to pull it [the shot] even if the defense is there. I thought she had a little bit more presence about where the defense was and going through her progressions, much like a quarterback does. [Figuring out] where's the defense, where's the help defense, where should I attack, should I reverse it. I thought she did a nice job of going through progressions and setting herself up for quality shots, as well as getting to the free throw line.
