Wisconsin Head Coach Lisa Stone
On it being a well-rounded game: “North Dakota is going to have a great season, they’re very well-coached, I wish them the best of luck. For us, this is good, we’re certainly going to make rebounding an emphasis for us, and taking good care of the basketball. “
On Teah Gant: “Teah had to play a very versatile role in terms of being a defender on one of their posts. Once we can touch the post and have success inside, that’s going to open up things on the outside. The nice thing about this team is that we have a lot of good people to go to, and even though they shut Alyssa down, we had other people going.”
On Tara Steinbauer: “She was very strong for us, we’re going to have her as well as the rest of the team continue to rebound for us, and make sure we limit our [opponent] to one shot. Our defense is our identity and we want to continue to get better and make sure we finish with a rebound. I thought with the foul trouble and the whistle blowing early, we have things to talk about later but I thought our team had a great effort. We wanted to make sure we did better on the glass during the second half.”
On the points off turnovers: “I like our team in transition, we made some fun plays in the first half. We’re good in the open court and that comes off our defense and that’s something we strive and work for every single day to get easy opportunities. Our offense is caused by our defense and again, I thought our kids did a decent job breaking the zone since we put our zone offense in yesterday. But a credit to our players, they’re excited about the year and this is our first step toward some really great things.”
North Dakota Head Coach Gene Roebuck
On today's game overall: "Well, we're playing a Big Ten team on their floor, so obviously we're going to come in and probably be a little uptight to start with. But, our players can make baskets, and we didn't make baskets. If you're going to play on the road against a team like Wisconsin, you've got to match them on your end of the court. And even though I think defensively we were doing a good job--they weren't exactly scoring every time down the floor--we just couldn't make baskets ourselves. When you're on the road, you have to answer when the other team knocks down some shots. I don't think we did. I think the whole game was, for us, really a battle. I think we battled on the defensive end, they were bigger than us. Our 6'5" girl, a junior college transfer who is working toward her certification, would have made a big difference for us. We're undersized, and I think we battled very hard on the defensive end, and they have some good shooters on the perimeter."
On Wisconsin as a team: "Well, again, for us, they're a very good basketball team, obviously. But it's hard for me to make an assessment on how they're going to do in their league, just because we don't play those teams. I know last year we played Northwestern, and so, I can't make an assessment on how they're going to finish, but from what I see, they're physical inside, they have some physical players, there's no way we could have played them man-to-man because Tara Steinbauer takes over inside. We knew that going in and we had played zone to basically have a chance. But when you have that size, and they have good quickness. I was really impressed with their point guard (Rae Lin D'Alie), she did a real nice job guarding ours, and our point guard's fairly quick also, and she did a real nice job of guarding ours. When you have a point guard who can put that much pressure on the opposing team's point guard, it really takes them out of the rhythm of the offense. I think they did that quite well."
