Postgame Quotes: VT 57, UT 43

Dec. 6, 2015

Postgame Notes

Head Coach Holly Warlick

(Opening Statement)
"We weren't very good. We are not a very good basketball team right now. We just have to get better."

(On strategy knowing lack of depth for game)
"I didn't even think about it. The seven people we have are very capable of playing 40 minutes, but I did think the foul situation hurt us. We had to do some things we wouldn't normally and use some different lineups. We are fouling, then the next play down, we are fouling again. The same person. We have to get some kind of discipline in our game and in our heads. I don't quite understand it, but it is my job to figure it out."

(On missed shots affecting play)
"It shouldn't. I thought in the first quarter we played hard on the defensive end. We gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter. A great basketball team does not do that. We are not living, we are dying by the three-point shot. We went 1-for-19. Come on, use your basketball sense. Get a two-point shot. We have to do something. I thought Bashaara Graves and Mercedes Russell worked hard. When it got in crunch time, we missed some easy baskets and that affected us. When you need stops, you have to get stops. We didn't do that."

(On Kortney Dunbar's absence)
"Yeah, all the games Kortney could help us. It's a good point, but we are better than what we are playing. Could we have used Kortney? Could we have used Alexa? Absolutely. We didn't have them. These seven have to learn how we are going to get things done. We obviously didn't figure it out today."

(On low scoring fourth quarter)
"I thought, for the most part, that we had good looks. I'll have to go back and watch the film. A prime example is when Mercedes (Russell) gets a steal, she is shut out, and a guard makes a pass that falls into the fourth row. It's hard to believe, and that's kind of how this game and this season has gone, we have turned the ball over for no reason."

(On how this game damages energy)
"I am not here just to motivate those kids, and they know it. Something has to start clicking for them, because I can go stand on my head, and they can figure out what they need to do. I thought in the first quarter we came out and got after it, but then after that we just kind of settled. I don't know the answer, or I would fix it. Now we go on the road, which will help us get more focused. I'm not giving up on this basketball team, but we need to get a lot more disciplined, and maybe going on the road will help with that."

(On the injury of Alexa Middleton)
"I think she has a bruise, and she has really hobbled on her ankle all year. I think it's a deep bruise on her muscle, and we have been trying to let it go and let it go, but rest is the best thing for her."

(On injured and missing players)
"If we had everybody available, that would be better. You have your best defender sitting on the bench, you have your utility player in Alexa Middleton, and that doesn't help when she is out. It's a combination of many things, but you have seven people capable of making a difference, and they didn't do that."

Redshirt Sophomore Diamond DeShields

(On the early foul trouble for the Lady Vols)
"You always have to be a little more cautious when you are in foul trouble. We had a limited roster. We didn't have any space to be relaxed. There was nobody coming in. We had to continue to be aggressive. We just had to get in a better stance and stay there, and try to do the best we could to not pick up any more early fouls."

(On the team getting on the same page offensively)
"We've seen glimpses of us being on the same page, and it's a beautiful thing when it happens. Right now, a lot of people are hesitant. We are still trying to figure out shot selection - what's a good shot and what's not a good shot. In the second half, we missed a lot of shots, but we also took a lot of bad shots. We have to continue to watch film and learn. Guards have to be smart on both ends of the floor. When we can get on the same page consistently, the sky's the limit for us, but we're not there yet. We're just going to continue to make progress. This game's over with. It doesn't have anything to do with the ultimate goal, and that's how we see it."

Redshirt Junior Andraya Carter

(On the disappointment from today's game)
"It's definitely disappointing. Any loss is disappointing. We just have to be consistent. Even in the game on Wednesday [vs. ETSU], our energy was up, but it was in the second half. It wasn't in the first half. We have to be able to put an entire game, and then we have to be able to put a string of games together. That's what the great teams do. We're just not there yet. It is disappointing. We're underachieving right now, but we just have to pull together and get better from here."

(On missed shots slowing down the team's energy)
"I think it does, but I don't think it should. Missing shots should be something that we know we can't control. My high school coach [told me] there were controllable factors, and I think that's what we need to hang our hat on - things like defense, hustle, rebounding - even when our shots aren't going in. Diamond [DeShields] has a great form. She can shoot a wide open shot, and it just might not fall. That might be how the night's going. I know a lot of us are in the gym extra, and our shots are just not falling right now. That's something that you can't control. You can put in the work, and you can shoot your shot. It's going to fall sometimes, sometimes it's not. Right now, we're not hitting shots, so I think we have to hang our hat on the things that we can control. We can't let those things get us down. We can't let the uncontrollable factors affect the things that we can control. When we miss a shot, we have to go down and just get in our [defensive] stance. We have to hustle. We have to play hard. On offense, we have to get better, but I think we really need to just hang our hat on defense and things we know we can bring every single night."

Redshirt Sophomore Mercedes Russell

(On what changed for her in the second half)
"I don't think anything really changed. I think in the beginning, as a team we were doing really well cutting up their zone and getting really good looks. I think as a whole we got pretty stagnant [in the second half]. We started taking some really bad shots. I think that's what caused [the change]."

Virginia Tech Head Coach Dennis Wolf

(On what changed for the Lady Vols in the second half)
"It appeared as the game went along that they struggled more and more with the zone. I think having a couple of girls out for them hurt them in all fairness. When you're in the position that they are in we got a little separation. The basket becomes a little smaller and they got a little tighter and I think that played to our advantage."

(On competing against the Lady Vols)
"I give them credit because if you look at the final score of the game we missed ten free-throws. You're lucky to be able to win a game like this."

(On defending Diamond DeShields)
"She had 15 points at halftime and I thought we did a very good job of trading off of cutters in their zone. They were trying to find different ways to get her the ball on the baseline and the middle of the zone and they weren't able to which was really to our advantage."

(On winning against Tennessee)
"For the time that I've been a coach we have never beaten a team of the stature of Tennessee. This has been a historically good program and we've been trying to work to get it back to where it was previously. It's taken us a little bit of time and we had a setback last year when Regan got injured and couldn't play. I don't want to say that we're back but we're headed in that direction."

Virginia Tech guard Vanessa Panousis

(On Tennessee's offense)
"We already said at the beginning of the game that we needed to get stops to win the game; we made that a really big point. Obviously in the first half when we weren't making a lot of shots we still had an emphasis on defense to stay up within the game."

(On the teams three-point shot average)
"Our coach and teammates tell us all the time to just keep shooting and those shots will drop eventually."

Virginia Tech forward Regan Margarity

(On Virginia Tech's defense)
"Throughout the game we played very well on defense. Defense was the key to the game so down the stretch we just talked and always knew when the cutter was cutting the baseline."