Dec. 2, 2011

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Notre Dame Head Coach Muffet McGraw

On Natalie Achonwa’s play…
“I was happy with her game today. I think she really wants to take that jumper, and she just hasn’t shot it enough. She needs to get in the gym and practice a little bit more before she is ready to take more. She definitely rebounded well though. She was active around the basket and active defensively. I thought she did some really good things.”

On the team’s rebounding…
“It was disappointing, but I think we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of bad habits. One or two practices is not going to change that. At least it would make an impression. I thought there were times when we really looked like we were trying to box out. It looked like we were getting a little better in the second half. We just really need more from the guards.”

On Kayla McBride’s play…
“Kayla [McBride] has a tremendous upside and has great potential. She can do a lot of things with the ball. She just needs game experience. She looks a little unsure at times. We need to run some more things for her to get her ready. She scored well around the basket. Otherwise, she was out of sync offensively. I think she can do a lot more offensively.”

On settling for the three-pointer…
“We do it all the time. We always settle for the three. We are not shooting well, and yet we continue to settle for it. We talk about it in huddles. We talk about it at practice. We talk about it quite a bit. We have to be willing to drive the ball. If you stay in the game, why should you change what you are doing if you don’t come out for it. We’re going to have to make some lineup changes. I think that is probably one of the things we can do to encourage them to drive the ball more often. Today we tried to do a high-low, but we still settled for the three. It’s disappointing to be a post player on this team because the guards are in control.”

On shutting down Alyssa Baron…
“We gave her quite a few looks. She still got 15 shots off. We didn’t even pick her up at times. At the beginning of the game, she was alone on the three point line, and a lot of times once a player makes their first shot they get rolling. It is disappointing when you have a veteran team and you talk about guarding one person and then she’s wide open for a shot in one of the first plays of the game. That shows where our focus was.”

Notre Dame Player Quotes

Natalie Novosel o Senior o Guard

On the energy of the game…
“Everybody can feel the energy with how we were playing, and the intensity just wasn’t there tonight. It has to be better.”

On her start…
“I took advantage of their defense and what they were giving me. I just worked hard to make the open shot.”

On going from receiving awards to the game…
“It really didn’t affect me that much. I just moved on to the game. I was excited to play.”

On senior leadership…
“It’s tough to get a team ready to play. We are missing Becca [Bruszewski] and that shows sometimes in these games. We have to find a way to get the team ready. As captains, we are not doing that as well as we should be.”

Devereaux Peters o Senior o Forward

On shooting the ball…
“I have not been hitting my shots that well this year. We’ve been watching film and looking at my posture and how I’m not squaring up. We’ve really been practicing that a lot and I think it’s starting to show in games. People were also looking for me, and I was open.”

On her scoring drought…
“Points are points. They are not really important to me. I’d rather get a stop on defense than score. We have plenty of scorers, so I’m not really concerned about that.”

On rebounding…
“I know personally I didn’t box out. That’s something I need to work on, and the team as a whole needs to. It’s a bad habit, and it’s going to take time for us to get out of it. We’ve been working on it a lot in practice, and we have to start transferring that work in practice to the game.”

Penn Head Coach Mike McLaughlin

Opening Statement…
“I thought tonight was a great experience for our team. It was two prestigious universities and that was one of the reasons we wanted to play. The Ivy League and Notre Dame have great academic requirements that our kids go through to get into our universities. Some of you don’t understand how difficult it is. Our girls are competing everyday as non-scholarship players, and to come out here in this environment, I think it was a good opportunity to experience this great atmosphere. That was our biggest goal, to come out and compete, look Notre Dame in the eye, and I thought we certainly did that. They represented the University of Pennsylvania very well tonight.”

On Notre Dame’s defense against guard Alyssa Baron…
“She’s required to do so much for us, but when you rely so much upon one player, you get some days where she goes 3-of-15 from the field, especially against superior athletes. We expected that, and she will learn that, and continue to get better in this environment again.”

On simulating Notre Dame’s quickness in practice…
“It’s difficult to do that period, but since we played Wednesday evening, it was even more of a challenge. Simulating something like that is always difficult, but we really didn’t get that opportunity.”

On the atmosphere at Notre Dame…
“I knew the tradition Notre Dame has here. We have a lot of players whose siblings went here. Our players have played in big games, but the atmosphere here was the best we’ve seen.”

On the play of Natalie Novosel and Devereaux Peters…
“You have to give something up, and we tried to switch all their screens and not get caught giving up easy buckets, but they ran their offense very cleanly. Good teams do that, and we adjusted pretty well, but at times it was a difficult match-up for us either way.”