University of Tennessee Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Lady Vols 47, Vandy 49
January 06, 2015 | Women's Basketball
Recap | Box Score | Notes
Tennessee Head Coach Holly Warlick
(Opening Statement)
"I have tremendous respect for Vanderbilt and what Melanie [Balcomb] does. For us to come out of here with a win is really huge for this basketball team. We are really proud of our effort, I thought we played hard. At key times we made big stops. Our free throw shooting was obviously huge for us tonight. We're just really proud of the win, and proud to go home with a victory."
(On guard Andraya Carter)
"I think she took it personally about her shooting ability. She's been in the gym, and all the credit goes to her. She's a great basketball player offensively, I think she just needed to be reassured and get in the gym and get reps. For us she is the epitome of how we want to play defense and she takes a lot of pride in it. She's our best defender right now, and she's rebounding, she's athletic, and she just plays the game the way it should be played."
(On backcourt reliance)
"I thought tonight Izzy got some good looks she just didn't finish them. Our guards have got to step up, and I thought they did. All we ask them is to not quit shooting the basketball. We want the defense to have to play defense. But I thought we ran the ball well, our press worked, and they were just solid. I think Jordan (Reynolds) has been solid at the point and (Ariel) Massengale as well. She's been very good for us off the bench and she gives us that spark. She has tremendous knowledge of the game, and I trust her."
(On how she approaches games with this team)
"I go in thinking about how we're going to stop somebody. I watched Vanderbilt quite a bit. That's just me, I go in thinking about how we're going to stop people, and can we get second chance points? Obviously we work a lot on the offensive end too. We put a lot of things in for this game that we thought we might want to use this game, but it just seemed like our offense was going better when we spread the floor and read what they were giving us."
(On the defense tonight)
"I thought we were aggressive, and we attacked the basketball. We switched more than we wanted too, but we did attack the basketball. For the most part we gave the m one shot and they were done. We just played hard. We played in spurts, but we made our run, we got to loose balls, we got them to turn it over and take quick shots. That's just a big part of our game."
(On the development of G/F Kortney Dunbar)
"We're working her at the 4. She shot the ball I think twice. I thought she got good looks for her. She's coming around. Some freshmen come around quicker than others, but she's going to be fine. Everybody is worried about her, but she is going to be fine. When you look at Isabelle Harrison, she played behind Glory Johnson and Vicky Ball, and she didn't get a lot of minutes, and she didn't understand it yet. But she learned a lot form those two. It's a learning process for Kortney, she's just learning the game, understanding the defense more, and getting up and down the floor. We're going to need her down the stretch."
(On forward Isabelle Harrison's recent struggles)
"I think she will settle down. People are being really physical with her, and she's got to get used to it. We probably need to move her a bit more too. I think tonight she got good looks, but she rushed her shot. The physicality has just been wearing at her though. When you're inside and its constantly physical it wears you down. She will settle down and be fine."
(On the difficulty of playing in Memorial Gym)
"I think that the location of the benches is tough, the openness of the gym, and I think Vanderbilt plays well at home. We always get their best here. We say it's a tough place to play because it is. The bench is one thing, and I'm not crazy about it, but that's where you have to have strong leadership. I thought our guards did a god job of that tonight. They called what was out there. They have to be intelligent because they have to call the game, and I thought Jordan [Reynolds] and [Ariel] Massengale were great."
(On the difficult of the SEC this year)
"There's not an easy game. If you can get one on the road, it's a bonus. I've never seen the league be as balanced as it is. I think that's due to the coaches and the players we have. There's a lot of parity. We cherish a lot of wins on the road. You saw Kentucky went down to the wire with Ole Miss, and Texas A&M went down the wire with Arkansas. I don't think there's an easy game. It's not an easy conference."
R-So. G Andraya Carter
(On shooting performance)
"I just wanted to take the open shots. EWE wanted to play through our posts or get good ball movement; I think we did a pretty good job at that. I wasn't really thinking about offense too much, just whatever shot felt natural that's the one I wanted to take. Our coaches were telling our guards to be aggressive and that's what we had to do."
(On carrying over confidence from game to game)
"It ways feels good to see the ball go in the net and like I said last game, my teammates and my coaches are consistently encouraging all the time. So it's easy to feed off of the last time and keep it rolling. But with my teammates and coaches it's easy to be confident."
(On difficulty of getting the ball to Isabelle Harrison)
"It's getting tough, and I think all credit goes to her and what she's done in the past and what she means to this team. Other teams feel like that to beat Tennessee you have to stop Isabelle Harrison. I give credit to us guards stepping up, Cierra [Burdick] stepping up, and other people stepping up on the team. Isabelle is making it easy for us even though it is harder for her in the paint."
Senior G Ariel Massengale
(On balancing offense and defense)
"I think that definitely helps us, because if we weren't scoring we wouldn't allow our opponents to score and I think that's how we've been winning a lot of games lately. We've got to do a better job, but that's credit to Vanderbilt and their defense. This place is always very very tough place to play, and we know that. We're just happy to come out here with the win."
(On Vanderbilt and its atmosphere)
"Vanderbilt is always a good team. I think it's just the rivalry and the way that their gym is set up. It's kind of hard to get used to the benches being at the end of the court and not really having the coaching staff right there in your ear talking you through things."
(On importance of team defense)
"Our coaches put a huge emphasis. Everyday in practice or when we're watching film, anything like that they are always putting emphasis on defense. And that's the thing about defense, if your offense isn't going well then you can always rely on defense. Defense is something you can control. You can't always control the ball going into the basket, but you can control the heart and the hustle that you can play with on the other side of the floor. I think we try to play good team defense, because if the other team doesn't score they're not going to win."
Sophomore G Jordan Reynolds
(On improving her shooting)
"Just repetition and working on something that you're good at. Just sticking to the basics; if that shot is going to go in then it's going to go in."
(On offensive lull)
"I think we were just doing rhythm passes and being nonchalant with them. We were playing like the game was kind of over, which we shouldn't have been. We did go on a spurt where there were a couple of turnovers."
Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb
(On what slowed down the Commodore offense)
"I have to give [Tennessee] a lot of credit. I think they did a great job, especially in the first half, taking things away from us. They were very physical, they switched a lot of things, denied a lot of things, and, to be honest with you, we were very out of sync because we didn't handle the physicality and we got frustrated. To be as young as we are, one of the toughest adjustments is to physicality and we looked like that tonight. We looked like young kids, and they were adults, at times, and they punished us. We got beat on the boards, and you can't get beat on the boards to Tennessee. With everything aside, and we fight on the boards somewhat, this game could have been different. It was physicality."
(On Andraya Carter's 19 point game for the Volunteers)
"Apparently we didn't try to stop her, since she got a lot of open looks. I think the positive is that you want to do a good job on [Bashaara] Graves and [Isabelle] Harrison, who had two and three points, but we let everybody else beat us. It's a missed opportunity for us. They had other people step up, four players in double figures, not just Carter but all of them. We gave them a lot of open looks and didn't execute our defense. As bad as our offense was, at times our defense was just as bad."
(On holding Isabelle Harrison to 3 points)
"The plan is to be physical with every post player in this conference. She's a very good post player, but she is a lot more finesse than Bashaara [Graves] is, [Harrison] is very physical. The further you can push out any post player in this league that can jump over you and score, the further you're going to want to push her away from the basket and give her touches further out."
(On the ups and downs of coaching freshmen)
"A little of both, but a lot more frustrating than exciting today. I'm hoping that it gets more exciting. There's no cohesion, there's no chemistry, we haven't had five people working together for one practice this year. Tonight was the first time I had all the players [for a game]. So now you're putting all the different pieces together, and that's why your effort, your physicality, and your 50-50 balls become so important early on. I think our offense will get better. The frustrating part is the same as the exciting part; that we don't know where our points are going to come from. We didn't know going into the season, and we still don't know. The exciting part is that the other teams don't know either. They're all capable, we have plenty of capable players."
(On her impression through two SEC losses)
"I've learned a lot. That's going to be my question for the players tomorrow: what have they learned? I think it's really important that they buy into the process. I, first, have to buy into the process. At Vanderbilt, we are supposed to win this game but, as bad as we were, we were in the game with two minutes to go and had a chance to win. Whatever way you want to look at it, we're going to have to stay positive with these kids and we are going to have to talk about what we learned each game, not about what we didn't do right. Everybody already knows what we did wrong, we need to have some solutions and have everybody learn. What we have to do is not keep making the same mistakes. We're going to focus on that."
(On Marqu'es Webb and the energy she brings)
"She was at her best, and then she hurt her knee and had this big setback. I really thought that she was phenomenal before she hurt the knee and she struggled. That was a lot of time not playing, so now she's just getting in the fold. At the end [of the game], she gave us what I know she can. She's so passionate, works so hard, and she's really smart. She has the mentality of a point guard and a coach in a post body. That's really rare. When she brings that energy, we're a better team. We're trying to find five players who can consistently bring that energy for us. Every situation's different, so it's hard to do that, whether you're up or you're down. We're in January, we're already in the third game of the SEC, I usually have roles by now and a rotation by now. Kids know their job. But some days they're still on the bench, mad because they didn't get in today. We don't have established roles because of that, as well. I think there's a lot of "I still" because of being young, and I think at some point we need to go from the "I" to the "we."
Vanderbilt So. F Marques Webb
(On the constant changing of roles on the team)
"It's a process. Today was the first time the whole season that the whole team was playing. We had Khaleann [Caron-Goudreu] out with an injury, I had to sit out for a while, Audrey [Caron-Goudreu] had to sit out for a while, Rachel was out sick, and today was the first time everyone was on the floor. Throughout practice you get some players who aren't healthy and whatnot, so I think like Rebekah said we're trying to find our identity. We're a young team, but at the same time it's January. We have to show some maturity and some growth throughout the season. I think we need to be more consistent as a team, whether it's in practice or in a game. We've gotten better. It will come. We've just got to stay positive and stick with it and we will be fine."
Vanderbilt Rs-Fr. G Rebekah Dahlman
(On the change of momentum late in the game)
"We didn't start off our best. They had more energy, more fights. They are a good team. We're trying to find ourselves right now and put the pieces together, trying to find the roles, and to try to come out better than we did tonight."
(On Tennessee's defense)
"They really denied everyone, even our post players. When we tried to reverse the ball they denied us really well. They were tougher than us tonight. We're trying to get better."
