USF Women's Basketball
USF vs. Rutgers
Feb. 6, 2010
Postgame Quotes
USF Head Coach Jose Fernandez
Opening Statement...
"I was really proud of our kids' effort. I thought the first half went well. We headed into the locker room up by three and we led throughout the entire first half. We weren't doing a very good job defending dribble penetration, and we can't shoot as poorly from three point range as we did. KaNeisha Saunders fouling out hurt us and then Leondra Doomes-Stephens fouls out. We had Sequoyah Griffin who had two fouls in that first half and she didn't play about fourteen minutes, and then she ends up getting hurt in the second half so we had to play some different lineups. You have to give it to Rutgers though, because those kids battled and they made plays when they needed to. That was the difference in this game. It was going to be a really important game for both teams and it was going to come down to one, two or three possessions and that is what it came down to."
On the importance of Jessica Lawson...
"We kept going to her because she was having such good game. We were isolating her on the block and she also came off a diagonal and came off a cross screen. They continued to play behind her with no help and she kept making lay ups. At the end, they started to double her a little bit and some of the perimeter kids were open on the weak side and we got it over there and we put up some ugly perimeter shots."
On Rutgers Full Court Press...
"We were inbounding the ball to a lot of kids that aren't use to handling the ball. Jasmine Wynne isn't out there and KaNeisha Saunders is not out there. You have Leondra Doomes-Stephens who doesn't handle the ball, you have Stokes who is a stand still shooter and you have Sequoyah Griffin who is more of an athletic wing. You are just trying to get the ball over half court and if we got it over half court then we got an opportunity to get a shot up. You have to hand it to Rutgers because they capitalized on that."
Rutgers' Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer
On Jessica Lawson...
"She had a monster game today. First of all, for her, as opposed to getting 14 shots, it's a bit much, but those are direct passes on top of the fact that she is hitting her free throws. She only got one offensive rebound, which tells me, and I saw it anyways, they are directly making the pass to her. The only adjustment I was trying to make was to put another person in there. It was obviously Chelsey Lee who wasn't handling her. She was panning wide, she was sealing, she would start to go halfway around and she did a nice job of sealing and moving to the position so there was no body. Monique Oliver was like a ghost. She might as well not have been there because that's what she was doing. That's basically what determined who was actually in the game. We tried to make an adjustment by switching to zone. We tried, what you would call, a 32 perfect, so that gave us a natural weak-side defensive position. It gave us that, but we only did that for a couple of minutes, and I think that I've seen enough "T" to know that if we were not there step for step with USF that they would be comfortable. I've seen them play in front of great crowds. With Notre Dame they played a great game. The coach has done a great job, and they execute, they know what you are trying to get. Because I know that they are capable of hitting it like that, I was very reluctant to zones. So by going into what we call a perfect, it looks like a zone but it really wasn't and it sort of confuses you for a little bit. That is what we were trying to do, buy a little time and do that. They are smart, they recognized our weakness and they attacked it. Clearly our post defense was key, but he also recognized that we were also attacking the post as well. We weren't hitting anything else, so we might as well go there.
USF Foward Jessica Lawson
On if she did anything different this game...
“I can't even say it was something I was trying to do. I think that from the Villanova game I was kind of hurt so I told coach that I would give it back to him this game to make up for it. Really I was just trying to get my feet set, get my feet under me and take my time.”
On whether there was a sense of urgency...
“Definitely because it is like every game is the last game for me. I think that being a senior you want to end on a bang so that is what I try to d. I try to bring a lot of energy and things of that nature.”
