Feb. 28, 2010
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
Wisconsin Head Coach Lisa Stone
Opening Statement: “First I’d just like to start out by thanking our seniors, Teah [Gant] and Rae [Lin D’Alie], for an unbelievable four years. They both came in as freshman and made an immediate impact on our campus. It was a wonderful tribute to them after the game was over. You can ask either one of these two when it comes to the fire in their bellies right now to continue to play lengthy into the post-season tournaments, the Big Ten Tournament and beyond. They deserve it. Coach Bennett just mentioned in the locker room that they really did it the right way. They are great student-athletes that represent our university with the utmost class. I’m proud to have known them and coached them and to consider them friends. It is going to be a great month for us. March starts tomorrow and it’s an exciting time for our basketball team.
About tonight’s game—Iowa is an unbelievable shooting team. You all watched the game and I watched it too, and I thought we did a very good job and had a very valiant comeback down in the second half to push it to overtime. They made some tough shoots. [Kamille] Wahlin’s last shot, I don’t know how she got that off, but it went up and went in. There were a lot of plays in that game, from start to finish, that could go either way. I give Iowa a ton of credit. They really played well, they came in here shooting the ball very well.
Pushing it to overtime, I felt good going into overtime. But it just wasn’t going to happen today. Again, that takes nothing away from the tremendous contributions of these two young women.”
On the team’s approach to the Big Ten Tournament: “We will attack the Big Ten Tournament to go in and win—that’s how we will attack the Big Ten Tournament. We played every team in this conference nose-to-nose and we played Purdue pretty recently, and it’s anybody’s game. It really is. I am as confident as I’ve ever been going into the Big Ten Tournament. Our mindset is to go win the tournament.”
On the end of the first half: “Shot selection. We were settling for jump shots. Our last six shots of the first half were all deep, shorter shots. The ball was not going inside, we were not attacking the paint and that put our defense on its heels. The way we executed offensively, and we talked about being decisive and disciplined offensively, trying to get action toward the basket, that’s when we’re at our best. And it allows us to get back on defense. We were taking deep shots in the corner, settling for outside jump shots, quick shots. We talked at halftime about adversity facing us. And we’re a team that talks about servanthood, togetherness, love and support and fighting through things. This team showed that in the second half. We took better shots, we made a runback, we played better defense in the second half. We rebounded the basketball. We addressed those issues. What we challenged our team to do in the second half, they did."
Iowa Head Coach Lisa Bluder
On getting the win against Wisconsin: “They’re a good defensive team. That’s what makes this win so much more special for us. I know we beat a very good team on their home floor.”
On the freshman class: “First off, they’re pretty special freshmen; I really believe that. I think that we’ve really tried to change our coaching philosophy this year. I’ve always been a person that really likes to practice. We have not practiced anywhere close to what we’ve done in the past; I think that was the best coaching move we’ve made all year. We haven’t went over an hour and a half on the floor since Christmas. It’s entirely different. It’s something that’s so simple. We’ve had to keep the freshmen’s and the upperclassmen’s legs fresh and keep everything upbeat. That’s really important for freshmen. They did not know until a week ago today where we stood in the standings. We just kept it out of their minds and I think that’s good for some freshmen.”
On the performance of younger players: “That was tremendous. I trust Kamille (Wahlin) with those shots. I also thought Gabby (Machado) had those free throws that were huge and I thought the charge Kachine (Alexander) took was incredible.”
On expectations of freshmen/younger players: “I heard people sitting at media day a few weeks ago talking about how young our team is. Kamille (Wahlin) played point guard all of her life so this wasn’t something unusual for her to come in and help out at that position. I have so much confidence in these players.”
On the play of Jaime Printy: “If Jaime Printy isn’t Freshman of the Year, something’s wrong. She broke the all-time freshman scoring record at Iowa that’s stood for 26 years. That is an unbelievable accomplishment.”
On the play of Morgan Johnson: “At one point, Morgan was leading the Big Ten in field goal percentage. A freshman leading the Big Ten in field goal percentage? I continue to be amazed at the quality of play we are getting.”
