March 25, 2014
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COACH BLUDER: First of all, I congratulate Louisville. They came out and played very well, especially defensively. They made us struggle offensively. They only scored four points over their average, but it was their defense that took us out of our game. I’d like to thank the crowd for coming out here this late on a weeknight. I want to thank our administration for hosting this event. They did just a great job again like they always do in hosting national events. They make Iowa proud. Unfortunately our team didn’t make Iowa proud tonight. That’s something we’re probably going to think about for a long time.
Q. Samantha, tell us what the Louisville defense did that stopped you guys from doing the things you wanted to do tonight.
Samantha Logic: We knew they were going to have pressure. We knew they were going to have some traps, different defenses. It wasn’t anything we weren’t expecting. We just really didn’t execute. We know how to break a team who do things like that. We’ve played teams like that in the Big Ten, in our non conference. Our coaches prepared us for that. We just got out of our offense. We didn’t execute. We did in the first four minutes and after that we didn’t score enough. We didn’t shoot the ball very well. I thought we had a lot of open threes that we just didn’t put down today. If you’re turning the ball over and not shooting the ball well, it’s not going to be easy to win a game.
Q. Sam, going into this game, what was the game plan defensively with Schimmel?
Samantha Logic: With a player like Schimmel, you’re not going to stop her, you’re not going to hold her to zero points. You’ve got to try to limit her touches, limit her shot attempts, make her take tough ones. I thought in the first half we did a little better job of that. Her team made a couple tough shots. Had a three bank in at the end of the shot clock. Some of those things you can’t control. When they’re tough shots, she’s going to make some tough shots. Second half she got to the line a lot. She got her points there, but again she hit some open threes. You have to try to contain her. You’re not going to control a player like that. You just have to try to limit everything they do because she’s a flat out scorer and that’s what she did for her team.
Q. Theairra, how would you summarize this season?
Theairra Taylor: Awesome. I played with a great group of girls, great coaching staff. We didn’t go out the way we wanted to. But coach said we can’t remember the season off of just this game. This is one of my favorite seasons being here as a Hawkeye. It’s something I want to remember as a wonderful journey.
Q. Theairra, what are you going to remember most about your career? Is it overcoming adversity?
Theairra Taylor: No. It will be the connections with my teammates. It’s a great group of girls in that locker room. I’ve played with so many players. They still contact me now. Just building those relationships that last longer than those basketball memories, that’s what I’ll remember most.
Q. It started well enough for you. It was 11 11. Things kind of dried up. What kind of turned there?
COACH BLUDER: We scored about one point in the seven minutes at that point. I felt like for some reason we went away from things that were working for us in the first few minutes of the game. I thought we had some great drives to the basket. We got in a little bit of foul trouble, unfortunately. That hurts us. I thought they did a nice job of really, you know, keeping the ball out of Sam’s hands. They did a tremendous job with that. Louisville, they did a great job. They did a great job defensively. They hit tough shots. Defensively, I don’t think our defense was that bad the first half. I think they hit some tough shots. Offensively, that’s what is disheartening.
Q. Talk about Theairra, what she’s meant to you and this program.
COACH BLUDER: I really couldn’t do that when she was in here but, the team loves her. We wanted this for her really badly.