Chattanooga vs. Samford
Chattanooga, Tenn. | The McKenzie Arena
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Postgame Quotes
 
Head Coach Shawn Poppie
Opening statement
"Well, I thought we had a wonderful crowd, supported us they tried to will us down the stretch. And unfortunately, we're back here with … feels like a similar result. So we're gonna keep growing and keep working and find a way to finish one of these things and then hopefully one turns to two turns into three. That's a a well-coached Samford team. She does a wonderful job. I thought we did some good things on the defensive end, but offensively we were not consistent enough."
 
On the play of Raven Thompson
"The thing with Ray [Raven Thompson] is that she did have success but the minute she doesn't, she starts being aggressive, and I've gotta get her. 'You're gonna make some bad plays. It's a sport, right? I have confidence in putting you there for a reason.' Same thing with Yazz [Wazeerud-Din], we put her there for her in there for a little stretch. We tried a couple of different things. It's just I think right now for us is when we make one mistake, we let it turn to two or three and then all of a sudden, it's a 4-0, run the opposite way. And we're not able to get enough of those on our end, you know, 5- or 6-0 run to where you get some breathing room. I thought early in the second quarter that we had a chance to stretch it open and we kind of relax a little bit and we'll do some some uncharacteristic things but again, Raven's gonna be a really good player. Some of it may be when she fully believes it."
 
On having close games
"It feels like I could stand up here and tell you the same story from six other games this year. You know, we've got to get mentally tougher down the stretch. With that said, I think our kids compete and we've put ourselves in this situation over and over and over again. We have to find a way. When we watch film tomorrow I may as well put on the same film as two weeks ago. It's very frustrating. I just told my staff  outside people may say, 'what are they doing in there?' I promise you you're watching a lot of film and coaching. They're working. It's just the light bulb hasn't clicked when the moment is there. We have to find a way to get that to click when we're tired when things haven't gone our way or whatever it may be. We did fine. I thought we got some good looks there. We made a few different little adjustments we got Yazz into the deep corner at times from the high post and got her a couple good looks and kind of got us in a little bit of a rhythm. But then I mean down the stretch. It's simple things, right. They've run the same ball screen for 37 minutes and we've hedged it we don't hedge in crunch time. We didn't change the coverage on the bench, right? We have to stay disciplined to do those things. If we expect a different result."
 
 
Graduate center Abbey Cornelius
On the back and forth down the stretch
"We talked about we've been in that situation seems like every game this year, so you just have to find a way to finish and that's something we'll keep trying to figure out and hopefully get better at down the stretch."
 
On the frustration of close games
"It is frustrating. Obviously, we talked about we've lost eight and seven of them have really been close at the media timeout. We're sitting right there either ahead or two possession games. So it's frustrating but we're always trying to work on it and it's just something we have to change."