Postgame Quotes: UT 111, Saint Francis 44

Dec. 3, 2014

Tennessee Head Coach Holly Warlick

(Opening Statement)
"It was a good win for us, it was a win. I think the one thing that we wanted to see tonight was, did we have the discipline to stick to our game plan? And for the most part we did. Did we play hard? Don't watch the score, don't worry about your opponent. Did you play hard? I think for the most part we did that as well. I thought that we would play well today because yesterday we probably had, well we did, I thought we had the best practice we have had all year long. If you had to rank a team number one, we would be the number one team in the nation in practice. But we have to learn how to carry that onto the game. I thought tonight we stuck to our game plan and we played hard. Like I said, that is all I asked them to do."

(On the rotation)
"We just thought we had the five that started, got us off to a good start, and then you look at the five coming in and three of them were our seniors, so we just thought that the five that came in would not let down what we had built. I think they liked it. It was a positive thing for us. Now will we continue to do that? I am not sure. But if we have the result that had today we probably will."

(On passing the ball)
"That was one of the top of our goals, was to make five passes or more, unless it was a wide open layup. I thought we did. When we moved and we passed and we cut, we got good looks. When you get good looks and you get open looks and uncontested shots, you tend to shoot the ball better. So I think that attributes to the 50 percent that we shot. We have been preaching it but we put a little fear in them too that we need to have five or more passes."

(On shooting confidence)
"I think so. I would say this, majority of our practices from the beginning to now have been pretty defensive oriented. We haven't spent a lot of time shooting the basketball and that was just my decision because I thought we needed to work more on our defense than our offense. But I think our offense and our shooting percentage suffered because we haven't done that. Now they have gotten in the gym on their own and we have worked with them individually but I think it has probably hurt us. Yesterday we shot the ball quite a bit, today we shot the ball quite a bit in shoot around, we have used our shoot around to go over some offense and defensive things and today we pretty much strictly worked on shooting the basketball. We hope we will build on what we did today. We took good shots. I would have to watch the tape but I don't know how many shots that we forced. We didn't force a lot of shots. So when you do that and get clean looks you normally shoot the ball at a better percentage."

(On what made them effective on the boards tonight)
"Because we went. We actually got in the paint and went for the ball. We challenged our team to get 50 percent of the shots that were available and we challenged our guards to get 30 percent of the shots available. Our posts do a great job, I think, of rebounding, but our guards have to do a better job and I think tonight was a start. A lot of our players are not used to going to the boards and we work on it and work on it and I thought it was just, we had a good result today, because we have been preaching it and preaching it."

(On having Isabelle Harrison back)
"It was great to have Izzy back. I am not worried about what she shot. I just know what impact Isabelle Harrison has on this basketball team. Just her presence, just her leadership. She leads by example because how hard she plays. She leads vocally. She gets this team to rally around each other. I think she can lead so much more when she is on the court. I thought she got up and down the court so much better than I thought since she hadn't played in a while. I know her wind was a little short, but she fought through it. I was excited to get her out there just going for balls. It's tough coming off a knee injury. It's tough when you go up for a rebound and you worry about your knee. I don't think she worried at all about her knee tonight."

(On Jannah Tucker serving suspended games)
"She got released before the Texas game. We are not quite sure what the number (of games) will be (that she sits out). She may be serving some more. She is available to go. She looks good. She is another example of getting her up and down the court not thinking about her knee and just thinking about playing basketball. I have been really pleased where she is headed and how she is playing. She will be available for us soon. She is another kid who has to get her timing down. She hasn't played in two years, but I will tell you this it hasn't effected her on scoring the basketball."

(On whether it is missing class that is keeping Jannah Tucker on the bench)
"Yes. It is just being a college kid sometimes you make mistakes. She just missed some classes."

(On Andraya Carter scoring the basketball)
"Draya can get in the paint. I thought she was solid. She scores around the basket because of her athletic ability she can jump. I thought she hit some good shots outside as well. Draya tends to think a lot about her shots, but tonight I think she just played and didn't think about it."

(On what to take away from this game to translate to more difficult games)
"Just playing hard. Chattanooga and Texas we didn't play hard. We had no fight in us. We got talent, but talent doesn't always win. You gotta play with heart. You have to be passionate about what you do. I thought those two games we were neither. Tonight we played with a lot of heart and we played hard. When you do those things, great things happen because you are talented. They are going to happen. If you go out there and think talent is going to win every time, it is not. It is not going to do it."

(On evaluating the team differently after playing a mismatched opponent)
"Absolutely. I think we will look at our individual goals, what they set and did we get them. We will critique the film just like we do regardless of who we play. We will watch the tape just like we did the last two games. I challenge them individually and we didn't ask them to do anything they weren't capable of doing. I just wanted them to go out and set their own personal goals and challenge them to do that. Just bring your best. When you have a team that is collectively very good then we are going to win the basketball game, but just do what you do best. So that is what we focus on and we will go back and look to see. We still made mistakes. We still got beat on a couple of drives. We missed some boxouts. We started to turn the ball over early in the game. We can't do that. We will go back, critique it, look at it and just continue to try to get better."

Tennessee Senior Center Isabelle Harrison

(On being back out on the floor)
"I am just happy to be back out there with my team."

(On what her first game back felt like)
"I felt a little rusty. You know I haven't been at game speed in a while but, I just got to keep working on it you know. Encouragement from my teammates really helped a lot."

(On going to Nashville to play next game)
"I'm really excited. I'm just so happy to see family, friends. It'll just be fun. I'll get to see them and my teammates will see them."

Tennessee Sophomore Guard Andraya Carter

(On how much the Lady Vols needed this game)
"I think we definitely needed this and it wasn't just the win. It was kind of just how we won, the energy on the bench, the energy on the court...the way we played together as a team."

(On the mass substitution in the game and if the players knew about it)
"No, we hadn't talked about it. Our coaches do all the subbing. Every group that went in kept the energy up."

(On when a team wants to run with them, on wanting to get a stop)
"Yeah it's really fun. Our coaches want us to be a team that runs, that pushes and transitions when the game gets going back and forth. We are getting steals, pushing it up, and running down the floor. That's the way we want to play. We all play hard. We are a team that just wants to keep going and that's exciting for us."

(On how nice it is to have Isabelle Harrison back)
"It's wonderful. It doesn't matter if she is rusty or if she doesn't feel like she is playing her best. We love seeing her out there. The way Izzy plays, the way she carries herself on the court, her energy, her leadership. So just having her out there, it's really good."

(On keeping up the shooting attitude on offense)
"It's really just my teammates and coaches. Um, actually I had a meeting with Holly [Warlick] the other day and she was like `I have more confidence on the offensive end than you do.' So they just want me to be relaxed and just play, do what comes natural to me. So it really just comes from them--the confidence that I have this year. Even though I'm missing this year my teammates are like, `Keep shooting Dray." In practice they tell me to shoot. My coaches have my back. So, it's easy to have confidence when everybody around you has confidence in you."

(On the most constructive takeaways from the game)
"I think what we did that was most constructive during this game was probably how together we played. We played very together and that is probably the biggest thing that we are gonna need. I think we just played as a team, we were very cohesive out there and we are gonna need that going forward and then our energy."

Tennessee Freshman Guard Jaime Nared

(On what Holly Warlick said to the first mass sub-group)
"Just to keep up what the first group had already done."

(On how eager everyone was to get back on the floor after the road trips and getting past them)
"I think we did a good job of just moving on. We came into practice yesterday knowing that we needed to do better."

(On her baseline jumper and comfort level with it)
"I think my teammates did a good job of getting me the ball on the baseline, but I don't think it's anything in particular comfortableness there. I feel comfortable playing with this team, and they just did a great job of distributing the ball."

Saint Francis Head Coach Joe Haigh

(Opening Statement)
"Not surprised at how good Tennessee is. That's our opening thought. I was disappointed in our lack of rebounding. At least we competed in the first half. The second half, we had some letdowns that I'm not happy with, but you know coming into a game like this how good Tennessee is, how good the program is, how good they are individually this year. We missed a lot of shots, and when we're trying to press people--you make shots to get into your press. We play with a lot better energy when we're making shots. That hasn't really happened since we played Ohio State in the beginning of the year, but when we hit shots, we tend to play a lot better. Tennessee is great. We kept saying before the game that if we'd come into the game--we're going to try to play as hard as we possibly can, every possession for 40 minutes. That's the one thing I'm not happy with--I feel like we've played harder for longer in other games this year. That's something we're going to get better at. We have to get that solved before we get to our conference season."

(On scheduling game)
"Most coaches know people. They know other coaches. It's a small group. We see each other out recruiting. I had met Coach Dean Lockwood a few years ago out at a WNBA training camp. We stayed in touch. I saw something happen in the summer, late spring, that Tennessee had a game that was open. They needed a date, and a fit date that we were looking at. So, we were able to make it work. For us as a program, this is a place--as a kid growing up, you know Tennessee. You know Tennessee from the women's basketball and the great tradition. So, I decided it would be a great opportunity for our team and our program to get a chance to experience this--to go on the road and play a legendary team."

Saint Francis Senior Guard Alexa Hayward

(On setting the school record for three-point FGs on Tennessee's floor)
"It's always an experience to play at big schools. Playing here, it's a dream. Growing up, you always here about Tennessee. It's cool that I can say that I set that record here on their floor in the presence of greatness."

Saint Francis Junior Guard Aisha Brock

(On experience of playing at Tennessee)
"I really didn't even pay that much attention to the score throughout the game until the last part. I didn't realize that we were down by so much. I just feel like you can't go into a game like, `Oh, this is Tennessee. We're just going to come in and play hard, and they're going to kick our behinds.' You have to come out every time we play like they are equal. You have to go at them no matter what. I know my shot wasn't falling early, so I was trying to drive, and I was getting some fouls. I didn't hit my free throws, but you have to use whatever the defense gives you. I just think you have to be in attack mode all the time."

University of Tennessee Athletics

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