Chattanooga Basketball Postgame Quotes
Samford at Chattanooga
McKenzie Arena - Chattanooga, Tenn.
Thursday – Jan. 25, 2018

Jim Foster, Head Coach
On the play of Aryanna Gilbert (25 points, 13 rebounds).
"She did a lot. That stat line shows that she made us a better defensive team tonight because she got us 12 defensive rebounds. You're not a good team defensively unless you close out plays. If the other team shoots, misses and gets the rebounds and scores, they're shooting 50%. If they miss and you get the rebound, that's 0%. When you get that many defensive rebounds you've cleaned up a lot for the team."

On the play of the freshmen.
"I think our freshmen are starting to get it in practice. They've been starting to get it the last two or three weeks. Now they are getting the opportunity. We aren't just going to put you in the game just to go in. There's certain things we want you to do. There's certain things you have to do and we need them to do. They're starting to do that and packing it all together. We had some very timely baskets and defensive plays from our freshmen tonight. They didn't play like freshmen tonight."

On what changed in second half.
"Our tempo. We started to read what was there. We talked about things at half time about how they were playing. They were giving us some looks. Some people had to take advantage of it. We just can't rely on two or three people to score. Tonight, what we hadn't been getting was timely baskets and we ended up getting that. The league is going to be bear all the way through. We're getting better as we move along here. You have to be as good as you can be in March. We have to have the proper mindset of getting better. The team who wins three games in four days gets the bid. We know how to be at that time of the year. We just have to get our freshmen to understand that mindset and tonight was a great step towards that."

On closing out the game strong.
"I thought we did a lot of good things. At the end of the fourth quarter and overtime, I thought we closed out the game in a real positive way. I thought we also took good shots in crunch time. We've got some veterans and some freshmen. The veterans play hard and some times that doesn't work for them. The freshmen see how hard they work day in and day out and they are starting to understand what we need and expect from them. They have some great role models in front of them."

Aryanna Gilbert, R-Sr.-G
On what improved in tonight's win.
"I've been struggling hitting some of the shots that I usually make easily. Today I was working on some three's, jump shots and post moves before the game. So that helped me tonight. I just let the game come to me. I tried not to force shots and find more quality shots in our offense rather than trying to create shots on my own."

On the tough grind of the SoCon.
"We know each others strengths and weaknesses. Teams are going to come out and try to take away our strengths so we just focus on getting stops."

On the difference tonight.
"We got stops when we needed them. We also scored when we needed to. That was the difference for us."

Lakelyn Bouldin, So.-G
On defense stepping up at crucial times.
"Throughout the game we began to step up. We stepped it up in overtime. That goes back to mental toughness in trying to close out games and we got over the hump."

On the play of freshman Brooke Burns.
"Brooke [Burns] was a little spark coming in. She works hard and is in the gym a lot. Tonight just showed how hard she really has worked."

On finishing it out strong in overtime.
"You have to take overtime just like any other quarter. You're still playing ball. You still have to go out there and finish it out. We had to get back on track to where we need to be and we did that tonight."