Nov. 20, 2010
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COACH BLUDER: All right. Well, I called no timeouts to speed this game up so everybody could get to the game on time. But I’m happy with the balanced scoring again. We’re one point away from having five people in double figures. Assists again are good. We shoot the ball well from the free throw line and get there often. I love the way we dominated the boards. I thought Morgan’s play was very good today. I was really happy to see her kind of come out of her shell this year and really give us a great performance there.
Q. When you talk about coming out of her shell, what have you seen from her as opposed to the way she played last year?
COACH BLUDER: I just think that Morgan knows how hard she’s worked and that gives her confidence. You know, she is stronger. I think she’s quicker. I love the hands on that fast break she had. It was tough. That was a tough catch in transition and in a crowd, and she’s able to convert that. She’s attacking the boards a little bit harder. So there’s a lot of things I like about how Morgan is playing this year. I’m glad that everybody else got to see it today.
Q. What does it mean if she can be an offensive force with the guards you have on this team?
COACH BLUDER: It’s enormous. For us, if we have that inside presence that opens up the outside even more because nobody can really they have to focus on her. They have to worry about her and that high percentage stat. So it really helps us out.
Q. Looking at the game I thought their three pointers and your turnovers were hurting you. But the stat sheets were not that bad. What did you feel?
COACH BLUDER: The first half we had way too many turnovers. We had 11 turnovers. We did a better job in the second half. They were outshooting us from three point range, and that doesn’t happen very often. It ends up pretty darn close. We got to the free throw line a lot, and that is part of our offense. For us to get to the free throw line. We’re a good free throw shooting team. That’s kind of overlooked how important that category is.
Q. When you have so many good stats and assists and shots, and everything just kind of coming along the way you hoped?
COACH BLUDER: Yeah. Again, I was even though we had a lot of turnovers, we only had a couple against the press. I thought we did a pretty good job of executing our press breaker when this is the first game all year that we’ve really had to do it. So I thought we did some really nice things off of that, so much that they took it off. That is a part of the game plan. They wanted for 40 minutes to press, and they couldn’t do that. Any time you change another team’s game plan, you’ve done something well, and I thought we did that tonight. Again, too many quarter court decisions on turnovers, but, again, there are so many things we had. The rebounds were outstanding. We had 50% of offensive opportunities for rebound, and that is an outstanding number.
Q. Kalli, she’s dressed. Available or only emergency?
COACH BLUDER: More of emergency right now. We want to get to tomorrow and we’re going to try to get her through a shootaround which would be good if she can get around shootaround or through shootaround and through warm up. That would be a good sign. But she hasn’t made it through a practice yet, and we really need to have that. I hope we can get her through some short practices in Cancun in order that she plays next week. It’s time. We need to get her in. I would like to get her in, and I hope that she can.
Q. Was Hannah okay at the end of the game?
COACH BLUDER: She had a back spasm and something we’re keeping an eye on. It’s just something that we’re going to have to always keep our eye on all year because she has that history of the back problems. But she’s fine. There is nothing damaging. She’ll be okay by tomorrow.
Q. Another quick turn around. Didn’t see a lot of ice packs, but not too bad, better than a week ago?
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, I thought we did better than we did a week ago. So, a lot of liquids, lot of ice packs and think we’ll be ready to go tomorrow at 2:00.
Q. Can you talk about three point shooting?
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, we need to do better. We’re better, it’s a strength for us, and it’s not showing right now. So I need to make sure that we get more shots in practice so that we have more opportunities. But that’s something that I have to do a better job of in making sure that we’re getting those opportunities. We can be better at that. FastScripts by ASAP Sports