Nov. 23, 2014

Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery

2014-15 University of Notre Dame Women’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Holy Cross
November 23, 2014
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center · Notre Dame, Ind.

Notre Dame Head Coach Muffet McGraw

Opening statement..
“I thought there were a lot of good individual performances but I thought we really shared the ball well today, and I thought we shot a lot better from the perimeter. Offensively I thought we did a lot of good things, I thought we were able to get some traps and get some steals and I thought our transition game was in high gear. Particularly, with what Brianna [Turner] did in 17 or 19 minutes. She’s an amazing defender when she can get out on the perimeter and get some steals. We were hoping for the dunk, but didn’t get one of those tonight, so we will have to keep waiting.”

On her halftime talk…
“We talked about our intensity and how we needed to keep it up and stay focused. We missed a lot of easy shots, I felt, in the first half and we could have done a little better job around the basket.”

On the reserves…
“I really like what the bench is doing right now. I felt like earlier in the season we only had seven with Madison [Cable] and Kathryn [Westbeld], so we were pretty comfortable with the seven we had. Then Hannah [Huffman] really made great strides in practice and started doing some great things. We had a scrimmage and she played well and she is continually improving. So then we had eight. But then Markisha [Wright] played very well today and that gives us one more, and now we are playing with 10 people. Everybody that’s coming into the game is doing exactly what they need to do. Mychal Johnson had a great game last time. She’s someone who wants to get more minutes. So I think we have 10 people now and all of them are really contributing. And that’s not saying the other two aren’t contributing because they are doing a really great job in practice.”

Brianna Turner · Freshman · Forward

On deciding whether to dunk or not on fast breaks…
“Well actually I was not thinking about it, I was just concerned with making the layup and getting back on defense.”

On the second half…
“I think when we get off to a fast start, that’s how we really get going. When we get off to a slow start you can see it in us. But we were out and got steals and ran the floor and had a lot of wide open layups and when we do stuff like that we get off to a good start.”

Kathryn Westbeld · Freshman · Forward

On her game tonight…
“It started with the starters coming out in the second half with a lot of high energy and a lot of focus and when I got subbed in, I just had to pick up on the energy and you don’t want to go out there and be slower than the rest of them and lose the tempo of the game. You just want to keep it up when you go out there.”

On three pointers vs. layups…
“I’ve always been more of a driver but I’ve been trying to shoot more three’s and spread my game out a little more. Its kind of in-between right now.”

Hannah Huffman · Junior · Guard

On Coach McGraw’s words to her after missed layup…
“When coach is mad at you, you are pretty much going to know immediately. I saw that she had that nurturing look on her face. She was telling me to relax and to do the easy part. I was definitely more frustrated than she was with the missed layup. She was being nice and it helped me calm down a bit. She encouraged me to grab rebounds.”

On giving away four Big Macs this season…
“We have to give the people what they want.”

Holy Cross Head Coach Bill Gibbons

Opening Statement…
“I’ve been doing this a long time. We played UConn when they’ve been number one. We’ve always played tough schedules early. I’m just disappointed that we didn’t compete. That’s a great basketball team. We put in a zone to try to make them beat us; they’re so strong inside. We lost our starting center to the flu before the game. It’s been a tough early road with injuries and that’s not an excuse, but I felt we had to play zone and then my worst nightmare came about when they started knocking down threes, so we obviously had to get out of the zone and try to play man-to-man. The game plan kind of went out the window there early. But I was just disappointed because we’ve had teams that have competed better against top teams, and this group didn’t respond. We’re young and we’re just getting a couple of players back, but still I was very disappointed in them.”

On Notre Dame’s 39-2 run in the second half…
“We’ve been on the end of those type of runs. People question why I do this–play this tough schedule and play these tough teams. Again, I’ve always had kids who have responded to playing against the best and made it to Patriot League championship games or won Patriot League titles. But until I’m proven wrong on that we’ll keep playing teams like this. It’s not as much as the run, as much as how we’re going to respond to it and getting our butts kicked. We’ve been 0-4 before, and top teams have blown us out before and our girls have responded. I talked a lot about that jersey that they’re wearing and how kids have responded and I challenged them to do the same. We’ll see in the coming days and weeks how we respond.”

On why Notre Dame is a tough team to play…
“I think like any top team, it’s just the fact that you have to pick your poison. They’re just well rounded. It’s like a football team that can pass it and run it, you can’t stop both. Or a baseball team that has pitching and hitting. A basketball team that can score inside like they can and has perimeter players, it’s hard to guard them because you have to pick your poison. We picked the poison to take away the inside game early and they buried us from outside. That’s what makes them so good. And they defend and they rebound on top of that. They’re just so tough to guard offensively and they defend and rebound they’re going to go on streaks like that. That’s what makes them so good.”