Feb. 10, 2011
- ‘Kash’ Alexander: All-America Candidate
- Vote ‘Kash’ For Premier Player Award
- Women’s Basketball – W.I.N. Video
- Buy Women’s Basketball Tickets
- Iowa and the Big Ten Network
- Big Ten Network: Free Hawkeye Video
- 24 Hawkeyes to Watch
PARDON OUR PROGRESS! As friends of the University of Iowa and fans of the Hawkeyes know, the UI Athletics Department is well into a multi-million dollar revitalization of Carver-Hawkeye Arena. This important and exciting project has reduced for this season the number of ticket windows that are operational on game nights. Fans attending the home events of the 2010-11 UI men’s basketball, women’s basketball and wrestling teams are invited to avoid game night delays by purchasing their event tickets online or in advance of game day. If your schedule doesn’t allow for an advance purchase, we recommend you consider arriving at the Arena a little earlier than originally planned. Go Hawks!
COACH BLUDER: Good win for us. Minnesota coming in here on a three game win streak, you know, playing with a lot of confidence, us on the other side of that spectrum, having lost two in a row. So I think it was a very big win for us. It’s always an emotional win with Minnesota. This is tough for us without Morgan. Morgan played 11 minutes in this game. She was tired, but I admire her ability to come out there and give us what she could. And I think that that was very admirable. Jaime Printy had kind of a rough shooting night tonight but comes up with nine points in three minutes and 20 seconds, and that is what makes her so dangerous. And honestly, doesn’t matter what she puts up a three, every one of them I believe are going in and certainly her last one was very important. Kach’s last bucket, she has a little shiner to show for it, a little badge of honor. I think it’s quite fitting that Kach makes the last basket against Minnesota.
Q. What does the game mean for you? Could be the last time you play against Minnesota?
Kachine Alexander: It was definitely a great win for me playing against Minnesota, and may be my last game against Minnesota but I think it’s a big win for our team, all of the hard work we put in, and after a disappointing loss from Penn State, I think Minnesota was (indiscernible) that’s kind of hard to meet, but let it out and we are proud of our team tonight.
Q. Was that play executed the way you wanted it to, the last one?
COACH BLUDER: No, it wasn’t. We were actually going to try to get the ball to Kamille for pretty much the same action but when we could not get it to Kamille. We had talked about, they had talked about, if they could not get it to Kamille, that Kach was going to take it instead. And we went to Plan B and Kach took it instead.
Q. What did you see on the last play?
Kachine Alexander: You know, I remember going out and getting down in certain situations I kept saying, you’re going to be open and I’m coming around for a hand up and when I came around for a hand up I knew Kiara was not letting me get to the paint. So I tried to get her off balance and I think I did that pretty well.
Q. Jaime, how does it feel to get the win?
Jaime Printy: Good. We are due for a win but I think it just goes to show, our team is not going to give up. We have a lot of important games left. And it’s always hard to lose two in a row, but I think we really bounced back tonight and played well together.
Q. The last three point shot that you took
Jaime Printy: That it was going in. I knew I was due for one, so just caught it and fired it up there.
Q. Can you talk about the team being down five with four minutes to play?
Kachine Alexander: At Minnesota we had seven minutes to go and we came back and I think on the (indiscernible) that was a pretty big swing, and our team has confidence that whenever we are down, we can come back and we just have to stay composed, and the great leaders that we do have, Kelsey, Jaime and I, we did a great job and we responded.
Q. Can you talk about Morgan?
COACH BLUDER: Well, she was pretty sick. She obviously had the flu and was out of commission yesterday for practice and she was not at our shootaround today. So she missed all of that, all of the game preparation. I really admire her, again, for just being able to gut it out and give us what she could.
Q. Kelsey had a few good plays.
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, the 3 pointer, that was nice for us. She had a layup when we were down five. She makes the layup to make it a three point game real quick. I wish we would have gotten that second free throw just to make it a really good night for her. But three 3 0 on Bobblehead Night, we need to do it every night.
Q. Is she or are you coming down with something?
Kachine Alexander: I woke up with a really bad sore throat. Kind of like this all day.
COACH BLUDER: Probably feels better now it though.
Q. The free throw shooting was awesome and only eight turnovers. Really took care of the ball well.
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, we did. And I think we had one or two charges, didn’t we? One for sure. No, two. When you take out those two charges, that’s kind of really six that we consider turnovers. So I think we took care of the ball well. We shot well from the free throw line, which we didn’t do against Penn State. So it’s nice to see us rebounding on that. Not happy with our rebounding. I think we can do better than what we are doing on the boards right now. I think we gave up too many old boards and didn’t get enough on the old boards, and that’s something we need to focus on.
Q. How important was it to come out of this with a win?
Jaime Printy: It was definitely important. We have talked about it a couple of times, what we have left this year and what we need to do; but I think especially getting our confidence back and getting on a win streak, as we said, it’s really good for our team right now.
Q. After Penn State, working on transition defense and drill penetration how much is that due to Minnesota or you guys blocking out on defense?
COACH BLUDER: Both. It’s both. Penn State, that’s their ammo. That’s what they like to do and they are very good at it. And so you know, it seemed like it was almost a low game after playing against Penn State, just because Penn State is just so good at running with the ball.
Q. What did you think when you saw the ten second clock and Keifer (ph) went the other way with the ball; what were you thinking?
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, it goes through your mind really quick, do you call time out or not. And at the same time, they didn’t have any time outs left, and I didn’t want to give them the opportunity to set something up. We let it play out. I thought that our team got back, was getting back well, and so I knew it was going to be a tough, desperation shot if she got something.
Q. What can you say about Kamille’s steal?
COACH BLUDER: You know, I really don’t remember it that well to be quite honest. I really don’t.
Q. A quick turnaround; can you talk about the quick turnaround.
COACH BLUDER: You know, these Thursday/Sunday games, you always go into the Sunday games with a little less rest because you don’t have the one day off beforehand. We’ll get some good practice on Friday and Saturday. Northwestern, we only played them once this year. We play them at their place and obviously that’s a pretty important game for us because they are right next to us in the standings so, pretty important game for us, and again, these ones that you only get once, they are so important, because in any tiebreaker scenario, that’s the one and only that it counts upon.