Head Coach Gary Gait Quotes
Syracuse Women’s Lacrosse
Syracuse vs. Virginia
February 27, 2009
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Head coach Gary Gait
Opening Remarks:
“I definitely think that we have a ways to go to improve. We need to develop team chemistry and confidence in each other and really improve as a team. I thought Virginia played great. They have a very experienced team, very athletic. They out-hustled us on groundballs, draw controls, and they did a great job of possessing the ball on the offensive end. They made us play a lot of defense. The pressure on the defense broke us down a bit, and then on the clears in the second half. We ended up not being able to come back and get the next draw control and change the momentum. Overall, it was an okay effort but we have a lot of things to improve. So we’ll be working on it and ready to come back and getting ready for Boston University (on Wednesday).”
On the game being like last year’s game vs. Virginia:
“It wasn’t quite as bad, but a little bit. We just couldn’t come up with those draw controls in the second half. Too many loose balls looked like we had but we went to scoop them and we just missed them. Those types of things remind me of last year. But other than that, we just didn’t finish the game and we didn’t finish the second half. They made some plays and we got outworked a little bit.”
On the scoring run Virginia went on:
“In sports in general, you go on runs and you get a couple of draws in a row and you are going to get opportunities. We were getting chances, but then we would make a turnover. They really played well on the offensive end. They didn’t give us a lot of opportunities in the second half to come down and play offense.
On what was different in the second half:
“Just possession of the ball. They did a great job of being patient and waiting for a quality shot and they finished. That was really the key, possession of the ball, making sure they had it and making us play defense.”
On changing the player on draw controls:
“Draw controls weren’t going our way so we changed it up a bit and used Megan (Mosenson). We have used her in the past. We rely on Christina (Dove) and Meg Mosenson and we went back and forth to give us a chance on 50-50 balls. We didn’t capitalize on that.”
On what went the team needed to do on offense:
“We have to get the ball, that’s the key. You can try to be patient and hope they make a mistake when you play good defense. You get it after four and half minutes and you hope to go down and make them pay. When you have time on the clock, you can do that. But if they score, go back to the draw and get the ball again, you can only be patient for so long. Then you need to be taking more chances. They played great. We took some looks, we went out and we pressured and they answered and finished on their opportunities. There is not a whole lot you can do when they aren’t making mistakes and finishing on their shots.”
On if he was surprised at all from where Virginia’s offense came from:
“We knew they come from behind, in the beginning we just wanted to apply pressure so they couldn’t get their shots out and they managed that. We made some mistakes and they capitalized. I thought they played a great game. We were ranked three and they were coming in ranked number four and they deserved it. We had to play our best game and we didn’t.”
On if the team has been in a situation like this before:
“Absolutely, we have been down this road before in the past and we’ll get better. Hopefully it will give the team a little bit more motivation to work extra hard and to show up at every practice and improve at every practice. That way, when we are in a tight game, we know what to do and we know how to finish it and we’ll be able to do it.”
