Chattanooga Basketball Postgame Quotes
UConn at Chattanooga
McKenzie Arena - Chattanooga, Tenn.
Monday - Nov. 30, 2015

Head coach Jim Foster
Did UConn's pressure push you all out farther in the court than you would have like?
"Not really. We like the be farther out in the court, it's the attentiveness of handling the ball that we didn't like or the not moving to bring them out in the space of the floor. If you move the ball you're going to get some opportunities. I thought we did a fair job in the first half. In the second half we just stopped."

What was the goal for the second half?
"I was talking more about how we can get a little bit better not goals at that point."

"We stopped moving the ball. We were very tentative. We threw the ball ahead of one of our players three times and being guarded by a post player we had numbers and she didn't attack that wasn't aggressive. We talk over and over again about some things."

"When you play a team at this level you practice every day and you talk about what you need to do to be successful against a team at this level. But then when you get into the game we regressed. Our point guard, she has a great pull up jump shot but she wants to shoot a floater or she wants to attack the basket."

"You're not going to attack the basket against this team from the side. It's just not going to happen. They rotate, their disciplined, they're very good defensively. But there's a space in between where you have the opportunity to pull up and make a shot. Talk about it and it think the reality of it, I would think that she would be smart enough that she would be in the gym the next time we get in the gym and I'll walk in and she's working on it, that concept. Because now there's a vivid picture that's painted."

"I'm going to put these guys over here and say their the exception. They're  the best basketball program that Women's basketball has ever seen.  That's a team that has the chance to win four national championships and they take great pride in it. At the end of the game, I'm watching some things, our little guard who's getting some shots off of AC, and they have a kid number  22 , doesn't play a whole lot."

"But AC gets open and that kid closed down and came as hard as you can, their up fifty, and she put a hand, she got there.  A hand in the face. Players shoot a lot lower percentage when a hand is in their face. In the NBA, and in college. An when you're up fifty and it's important to you to get a hand in their face, that's impressive."

On their defense in the second half…
"It's going to take an effort that no one has yet in their game. Now in the involvement of a team through the months of December, January, February, and March maybe someone will evolve. The intensity and the intention to detail that they play with, as a coach, it's refreshing to watch."

"In this day in age of dribble drive I want to get my own. It's kind of refreshing when it's the Golden State Warriors or Connecticut Women's Basketball or some teams that are playing basketball the way I like to see it play. Not only Gino but just the players and the understanding of what being on a team really means."

What did you see from your team tonight?
"I thought they played hard, I don't think we played necessarily smart but I thought we played hard. First half especially."

Jasmine Joyner, forward, junior
On UConn.
"They're good. They're really good. First half, I could say we kept up with them. It was a fun game in the first half. Second half, with this team, if we shot, we missed. If we didn't do the stuff we were working on and if we tried to take shortcuts, they would take advantage of it.

"That's what makes them a very great team. They took advantage of us and they played as a team. If you're not on your toes against this team, they will take advantage of it."

How would you describe their defense?
"They played defense very aggressively. We should have been familiar with it because Arkansas State, who we played earlier, they played aggressive on defense. Georgia played aggressive like that."

What do you take away from playing a team like this?
"In the games, if we see them take away something on offense, we just have to get back on defense and not let them get an easy fast break. That's the first thing. We can do things that we can control, like boxing out, helping our teammates on defense, not fouling, rebounding. If our offense is not working, we can take them out on defense."

"I think it was a learning experience. We went against them, and now we know lots of things we need to work on and our players know what they need to work on individually. Now that we've played against teams like South Florida and getting ready for conference games, it's going to make us a better team."

Keiana Gilbert, guard, sophomore
What do you take away from playing a team like this?
 "I mean, just looking at what you did wrong, and getting better at it, practicing it, working on it."

Was it surreal playing them?
 "Yeah it was kind of surreal. Not everyone gets a chance to play the best team in the nation. We couldn't take advantage of it, but we've got to play our hardest and get better."

UConn Head coach Geno Auriemma
Opening statement.
"Obviously coming in we had a pretty good idea this wasn't going to be one of those run up and down the floor and score 100 points easily. That's not the way Jim Foster coaches. That's not the way his teams play. Last year, they had two big wins here, Tennessee and Stanford. We knew coming in that it was going to be a different kind of game. A game that we were going to have to grind it out one possession at a time.

"The first 20 minutes that's exactly what it was like. In the second half because we have so much depth, I think we wore them down. They had a difficult time getting the shots that they wanted, and that's just the kind of players that we have. When you play like we play defensively in that second half, it's hard to play against us no matter who it is."

On strong defensive performance.
"Our players knew what we were in for coming here. We knew that we were going to have to defend it for 30 seconds, not 10. There's a lot of different styles of play. You play Ohio State and you run back on defense and you hope you get back in time before they shoot it. You don't even have to get in your stance sometimes because those shots are going up and already here. We knew that we needed to get in our stance, and we needed to guard them.

"This team responds well to different types of challenges, and tonight was really, really good. I told them I was really proud of them tonight."

Was it your defense that made such an impact in the game?
"That first half it seemed like every time we made a mistake, every time we were a little bit late getting where we were supposed to get to, they knocked in a shot. When the one kid banked the one in, you come to expect that. They were able to keep their composure for much of the first half, and that's a big thing.

"When we play teams we have a tendency to take them out of their comfort zone and that happened in the third quarter. It happened more by how quickly we were scoring. Because we were scoring so quickly, that puts pressure on the other team to have to hurry up and come down and score. I don't know if it was our defense but certainly our offense made the game quicker."

On team's strengths.
"We've always prided ourselves on No. 1 conditioning. We want to be the best conditioned team in the country. No. 2 we want to play a game where it's difficult to know what we're going to do because we do it so quickly. We're trying to play quick enough that we're going to do things that aren't on the scouting report and our two guards are really good at that."