Post Game Quotes: Postgame
1/22/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Associate head coach and acting head coach Amaka Agugua
On the execution today…
Defense has kind of been a problem for us all year. We do man-zone but I thought we had a pretty good game plan. We had two days of practice. Purdue is a very good passing team. They play well together so you can't really give them a steady diet of any defense, really. We tried to switch it up a little bit. It seemed that our man to man in the second half was giving us the best results. Ashley Morrissette got away from us. She had 31. We just weren't rotating right. We weren't high up on our switches, we didn't have help side. They just kind of shredded our man down the stretch.
On getting Branndais more acclimated to the offense…
Branndais (Agee) is a very good player. She's a dynamic player. She kind of had a slow start this preseason because she sat out the whole preseason with a foot injury, which put her a little bit behind the eight-ball. She wasn't able to work on her shot as much. She's just trying to get back in the swing of things. We work on it in practice. We need scoring from other people than Tori (Jankoska). We've been trying to empower Branndais to be able to score the ball a little bit more. Taryn McCutcheon, to shoot some shots she can really knock down the three. Also she can put pressure on defense by punching gaps. Really, the game plan was to get the ball inside. We thought we could take advantage of them there. We've been shooting a lot of jumpers, three's and jumpers our last couple of games. We wanted to put some pressure on defense and see if we could get some easy layups out of it. We got more than we've gotten out of the past games but I think we missed a few easy runs right there at the rim.
On what this team needs to do to find its footing…
Something that we've been talking about a lot is just coming together, especially when we hit adversity. We've hit a lot of adversity this season, obviously with our head coach, but also just some ups and downs with injuries and people being out here and there. When we hit adversity in the games and things aren't going our way, we have a tendency to kind of grow apart. We want to work more so on our energy and just coming together and fighting through it together. But, more tactical, we have to get more scoring around Tori. Tori's been really consistent for us and she has to do that for us. We need her to be almost a triple-double every night. That's her role on this team. But we have to have some other people that are averaging double figures and more so from the inside. Taya Reimer, we need her to get more points on the board. Jenna Allen, Branndais Agee, Taryn. We have a lot of fire power we just need to get our confidence right.
On what was discussed during halftime…
In the second half we just talked about punching first. We got punched in the mouth in the beginning, not even in the beginning but in the middle of the first half we didn't really respond too well. So, we just talked about being aggressive, getting the ball inside, more paint touches and people just being confident and taking shots. When you're open, take the shot. If someone closes out on you make the extra pass.
On the amount of freedom Suzy Merchant has given…
Right now, pretty much all of the freedom. I'm stepping in for her as the interim head coach but even just in the past as her associate head coach she's given me a lot of freedom and lee-way to call. Out of bounds plays, I've always done that. I call certain calls. We work well together. In practice she gives me responsibilities. I call out plays or coaching one team. I think all of that has really helped me actually prepare for this moment. She gives me a lot of lee-way in practice, a lot of lee-way in games, I talk to the kids in the locker room when we're in there after the games maybe even at half-time. I think that she really believes in me. She's said to me multiple times that she feels blessed that I'm the person that's kind of taken the reigns right now. I'm just trying to hold it down until she can get back.
On turnovers…
Yeah, turnovers killed us. We had 19 tonight. We forced 22. The difference was that they had 22 points off of fast breaks and we only had nine. Turnovers killed us. They were unforced. They were sitting back in the zone and we were trying to make an entry pass and just threw it right to the defense. I think that killed our moment in the fourth. Every time we closed the gap, there was a turnover or a missed box out or whatever it was and then Purdue was coming down full force on the other end and scoring in transition. It was hard to keep the momentum our way but our kids fought until the last buzzer. I just think that if we could have limited our turnovers and made a couple of more layups and rebounded and got our transition break going it would have been a different situation.
On Alumni support tonight…
It was awesome. It was good to see some familiar faces. Some that I've coached while I was here, some that I have seen that have come back over time and some of the older ones that came back and seen some game film or that have come and talked to the team before. So it was good. It was a constant reminder of who Spartans are and what we do and that is always supporting no matter what and coming back through the thick and the thin. Through good times and bad. We used that. I talked to the team about that as well. All of these people coming back, they're supporting us and have our back so when we're on the court, you guys need to have each other's backs too.
