Coach Hillsman, December 2 2008
Opening Statement:
“I’m glad to get out of this game with a win, to be quite honest with you. We’ve had a lot of games, we’ve been really, really pushing our kids a lot and we’ve just had a ton of games. I was worried about our legs possibly being gone for this game but we came out and we played well. To get four players in double figures, that is the key to winning basketball games – I really, really believe that. The only thing that was a little disappointing we fouled a whole heck of a lot in the first half, we can’t get our starters in foul trouble by reaching in. I think a lot of that, too, obviously was fatigue, for our players to reach they’re tired. We got out of it with the win. I thought that overall,l we did a very good job in the first half on three-point shooting, but we gave one of their big shooters five threes in the second half. We can’t afford to do that – give up threes in the second half of the game. She hit a couple deep late that we were saying that we were definitely going to get out on them, switching and being aggressive. Troya (Berry) did a very good job for us throughout the game but as part of being a freshman, you don’t really understand when we’re saying go get them how far you have to go get them. We just have to do a good job of preparing our kids to really get out and extend. We did play a great game defensively late but when you talk around extending the floor on shooters 30 feet, I don’t think high school kids can fathom a kid shooting that in rhythm coming off the ball screen that deep. Overall, we got good minutes from our bench and we played really tough.”
On the teams rebounding performance:
“That is unbelievable. You talk about playing that physical and that tough after all those days of playing in a row that’s a tough one because that is all effort, heart and conditioning. I always talk to my kids about being in shape and tonight they really showed how tough they are and they showed their conditioning by going to the glass and getting 22 offensive rebound. That is an unbelievable effort in going to the glass.”
On what he said to Chandrea Jones at halftime:
“I didn’t say anything to her because I knew she would get it going. She has been playing a lot of minutes the last couple games. You have a great player and she is going to be a pro you try and let her fight through it. Overall, what she did was she wasn’t making field goals but she took the ball to the basket and got a lot of free throws. She should have had five or six more shots but she was bending out a little bit and that is something we’re working on with her, not getting her back to the basket at any point because then you have too many people that could keep her out of the lane.”
On the teams’ schedule thus far:
“We have travelled 6,700 miles, really. We have travelled 6,700 miles, as Coach Boeheim would say, I would probably do it differently, no question. I am tired so I know they’re tired. We say we are going to put our kids in adverse situations, I don’t think we could have put them in a more adverse situation then we have, but they toughed it out. I keep saying how tough these kids are, my wife would tell you there are nights before I lay down I go ‘these kids are crazy I don’t know how they do this’ because I really don’t. We don’t have soft practice, we go hard everyday. Today we didn’t have a good shoot around. We ran and ran and ran for mistakes in shoot around so I tell them if you’re going to make mistakes we hold each other accountable. We’re big on accountability. We don’t care if it’s the night before or the day of, we have consequences for everything. We have some running to do for this game – we have certain goals that we want to reach every game and we didn’t reach them all so we’ll be here early morning Thursday morning and pay our dues.”
On Lehigh’s scoring runs:
“When their team started running past us and getting things in transition, I knew we had to be tired because we’re definitely more athletic then they are. Their shooters can really, really shoot the ball and I give them a nod on that one, but as far as athleticism, we can really, really run up and down that floor. When they start getting things in transition on us, I knew that we needed a timeout to regroup. You know, I never use all my timeouts and today, I used them all just to make sure that we got enough rest.”
On Vionca Murray:
“Vionca was big and she has been playing injured. When you have a calf injury, I always tell her that is the old man injury. I hurt my calf playing basketball this summer and it took six weeks to recover so she is coming back pretty quickly off the injury. She still needs to get a few more days rest and get some treatment but I thought she was big. They threw the ball inside and they were obviously worried about her because they dealt with her every time she caught it. They were worried about our post game and it’s a compliment to Vionca and Troya (Berry).”
On Syracuse’s game plan:
“We wanted to focus on (Lehigh’s Erica) Prosser and (Alex) Ross and not give them a lot of open looks. We did a very good job, we let Ross shake loose in transition – what happened was she was running that sideline and we were trying to play inside out on our defense and she stopped within 25 feet and our kids are lunging out at her. They just did a good job of running to their scoring range and catching it and shooting it. That is something that is a tired thing. It isn’t a thing we didn’t prepare for because we did prepare for them shooting the three in transition. We drew that yesterday for a long time. We didn’t want to give them layups then we starting giving them 25-foot jump shots in transition and they made them which was tough.”
