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Q. This game had to happen, did you feel?
COACH BLUDER: It was fun. Again, I hope that St. Ambrose benefits in this because we certainly did. We benefited from being able to come out here today and being able to execute, being able to get the freshmen on the floor for the very first time. But I felt Logic versus Logic is also a fun type of story.
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Q. Can you talk about getting the freshmen on the floor, what was the number one objective you wanted to accomplish today?
COACH BLUDER: Get better at execution. We told them, ignore the scoreboard, and I thought we did a good job of keeping our focus and keeping our intensity the entire time. That’s not always easy to do, but I thought we did get better at executing. We were able to run our stuff and work on it. I thought we passed the ball extremely well. We had 28 assists on 41 baskets, and that means that they’re not trying to do it all.
You can come on a game like this and say, oh, I’m going to take over and just get my points. That’s not the identity of this team, and they didn’t do that again today. I love the way they distributed the ball. They shot the ball well from every area, including the free throw line. I love that we only had nine turnovers because we had the ball in our hand for a lot of possessions. For us to only have nine turnovers was very good.
Q. Coach, If I’m not mistaken, you had somewhat of a hand in Brette playing at St. Ambrose as well?
COACH BLUDER: Well, I think Brette was interested in there, and if I remember right I might have put a phone call in there, but they may have already known about her before then. I don’t really know the situation.
Q. Coach, your thoughts on the atmosphere today, all the fans? It was electric for an exhibition game.
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, I think that’s great. I want to thank our fans for coming out because it’s an exhibition game. They’re not used to us playing. You’re not used to Sundays looking forward to the women’s basketball games yet, and they came out here. I think that’s how excited they are about our season. They’re excited about seeing these freshmen play.
I thought our freshmen did really well for the first time out. You think two of them accounted for 21 of our rebounds. That’s nice. That’s nice. I thought Carly and Christina or Carly and Chase both had six offensive rebounds along with Beth. So that was really nice to see. So I thought Whitney, we needed to get her comfortable in that role, and I thought we accomplished that. So I thought the freshmen did a very good job.
Q. Is that role of being the first option on the bench something that you’re comfortable doing (question about Melissa Dixon)?
COACH BLUDER: Most of that was preseason injuries, so this is her first week at practice. So she’s (Melissa) been only about half the time this week is all.
Q. What do you need to accomplish between now and Friday?
COACH BLUDER: I think our zone needs to get better. I think our box outs, we need to find somebody to box out and having that contact needs to get better, and I think our defensive transition needs to get better. Those are three things we identified as really needing work.
