University of Minnesota Athletics
Postgame Quotes
12/6/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Towson at Minnesota
Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Marlene Stollings
Opening statement...
"I'm pleased to have five players in double figures. I'm extremely pleased with our guard rebounding. Three of our guards ended up with double-digit rebounding. Just, offensively, a very strong performance for us in the second half. Defensively, we had some lulls, obviously, especially in the first half, but I'm pleased overall with our performance in the second half and how we worked through that."
On Joanna Hedstrom's versatility...
"We use her almost everywhere on the courts, and, against smaller teams, she's able to go play the five for us. They were pretty guard-dominated so we were able to utilize her. They were playing some junk defense through the first half. They were playing a lot of trained 1-2 on Rachel (Banham) and Carlie (Wagner), so we like Jo being out there to give us the 3-point threat."
On Minnesota's centers tonight...
"The matchup wasn't good for them. We were going against a team that was pretty much all guards in what they decided to do, and it wasn't a good matchup for us in that way. Then, offensively with them playing the triangle-and-two, it gave us a much better look to have someone like Joanna out there with the offense we were running at the time."
On knowledge of Towson before the game...
"As much as we know about everybody. We're very thorough with our scouting and our preparation for the game. They had not played any junk defense prior to playing us. We were ready for that. We saw it a handful of times last year, and early in the season here we saw that against three different opponents, so we have offense to go against that and we're prepared for people who throw junk defense at us."
Shayne Mullaney, Guard
On how the Gophers recovered from their slow start…
"We just had to keep shooting. We knew that we would eventually start making those shots. Usually we do, we just had to keep shooting them and eventually they would fall."
Carlie Wagner, Guard
On the team's fourth quarter performance…
"Our motto is that we always win the fourth quarter, so I think we pick up our aggressiveness. It's game time, the home stretch."
Rachel Banham, Guard
On the team's thoughts at the end of the second quarter…
"Every timeout we were talking about defending the threes. We let (Dominique Johnson) get a little too hot out there, and we just have to be more active with our hands so we can get more deflections and steals. It's something Coach (Marlene Stollings) was continuously telling us throughout the game and something we need to work on adjusting to, but offensively we're fine. We know how to score the ball, it's just the defensive end that we have to lock in on."
