Post-Game Quotes: Louisville
12/3/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
MSU head coach Suzy Merchant
Opening Statement…
That was disappointing. Give Louisville a lot of credit; they really came out of the gates strong, which we kind of thought come out a little more inspired. It was kind of disappointing that we didn't respond until really late in that second half. We were able to fight back, which was good, but turnovers. You have 27 turnovers and especially in the post position. We had 12 in the post position, which was a problem obviously. Tori (Jankoska) didn't play well, and Jasmine (Hines) didn't play well, and those things kind of accumulate. Just disappointing. Having Asia Durr on the floor made a huge difference. She hadn't been playing; she's been hurt. She came in and was phenomenal. I mean 20 points, and that makes a huge difference in their ability to score the ball when she scores. It was disappointing, that's for sure, but we gotta bounce back.
On Aerial Powers' injury…
I thought it was cramp, but I don't know. I'm not sure right now.
It's frightening. It's so frustrating. It seems like every other sport at MSU can play without, and people who do get hurt seem to come right back. But I don't know, but that certainly put a pit in my stomach. She's certainly a big part of what we do. It certainly scared me. She's had a lot of Achilles problems. I thought it was just a cramp in her Achilles, and it was the one she wasn't nursing. I believe it was the same one as she had when she was a freshman.
On how the team performed…
I just felt that we were beating ourselves. In the first half, we didn't attack them. We were really soft. On offense, we didn't take anything but jump shots. They got 50-50 balls, we didn't. We didn't score the ball very well. We didn't move the ball very well. I felt that we did it to ourselves. I tell my kids all the time, if something's not there, it's not there. Let's bounce (the ball) back out and run a good offense. And we've had some untimely turnovers in our transition. So we have to clean that up. We've been taking care of the ball, too, so this was a little uncharacteristic. We've been doing a really good job of taking care of the basketball this entire season for the most part.
On the positives…
We just gotta put it together. It was just disappointing down the stretch to have the opportunities that we had and not come up with them. I did like our fight. We didn't capitalize on those. We'd make a steal then miss a layup.
