Head Coach Suzy Merchant Quotes
12/16/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
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Michigan State Head Coach Suzy Merchant
On how important it was to come out aggressive tonight against Alcorn State with teams like Baylor and Syracuse coming up on the schedule in the Florida Sunshine Classic...
Yes, if we do what we did for that period of time I'll be happy. It wasn't pretty that's for sure. That was our talk at halftime. I asked them what team they wanted to be. We got off to a good start then we told ourselves we got this and stopped playing. For that team to out-rebound us at halftime after out-rebounding every team we played it says a lot. When talking about loose balls and rebounds, it's about who wants it more. I thought we were a step slow in the motions. We had to come out in the second half and make a statement because it certainly wasn't our best first half.
On whether she was paying homage to coach Tanya Edwards and the Lady Braves by wearing the purple suit...
I grew idolizing Tonya Edwards just like every kid in the state of Michigan. She was the best player to come out of here. She was an Olympian, an all-star, a WNBA pro player, played at Tennessee and won a national championship. I had back-to-back games where I'm coaching this year against Sheryl Swoopes and Tonya Edwards. I found myself kind of star struck a little bit. I grew up idolizing those kids. In Sheryl's situation, I just admire her and what she's been able to accomplish. Going back to Tonya, what she's done for Flint and the community has been pretty impressive.
On whether she sees this as a holiday hangover...
I thought we we're pretty sharp after exams on Sunday at Loyola on the road. I thought Loyola was a better team top to bottom, and I thought we played a little harder and were more aggressive. We had a lot more toughness to us in that game. I thought there was a 12-minute segment tonight where Alcorn was the better team to be quite honest. I was a little disappointed in that we certainly didn't play the way we needed to. I thought we managed our energy did some walk through stuff on Monday. We didn't kill them, but when you do stuff like that and you're not as sharp we need to be able to learn to balance that.