Postgame Quotes
Chattanooga 66, Mercer 57
Chattanooga, Tenn. | The McKenzie Arena
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
 
Shawn Poppie, head coach
 
Opening statement
"It's nice to go 1-0 to start this thing [SoCon season] off. Thank you to the fans. I think we're slowly building it. You could feel the energy in McKenzie. Excited to hopefully build off this and get some more people in them seats come Saturday. We've got a really big game against Samford coming up."
 
"Proud of our group. I thought we competed. We had a little bit of a stretch like we've been having, but it wasn't long and some of it was Mercer. They went zone there in the fourth quarter. That was completely on me. I did not have them ready for that. Overall, very, very pleased with the energy that we played with. Hopefully that's something that we can build off of as we head into the rest of Southern Conference play."
 
On having a larger lead late in the game
"I wish I could do it a little bit longer. I probably should have, to be honest with you. I thought it was a great opportunity for a couple of freshman to finish the right way and we didn't quite do that. But it's good. It's learning, right? They get an opportunity to learn how we finish games. There's so many. One, you want to leave there with a great feeling. We played all 40. But the other piece is little stuff. That matters in the Net. If you win by 10 or more, that matters. We win by nine tonight when we had the opportunity to add value in the Net. Those are like learning moments. It's much nicer when you're talking about winning by nine, ore 11 or 12 in the locker room because they've done the job."
 
"Obviously Raven and Jada play a huge, huge part for us. It's kind of how we're built. They know that, we know that. We play off of them. I think we're gonna continue to get better and learn each other more and more and more as they continue to play. They are, in my opinion, two of the best in this league. They're gonna be very valuable for us."
 
On being ready when playing so few games over a large stretch of time
"I do not think, personally, I had them ready for NC Central. We may have been ready X's and O's, but it was hard to manage their legs to get them ready to play a game without pounding them. Like you just mentioned, we're gonna ask a lot of Raven Thompson and Jada Guinn. So you don't want to pound them in practice, but when you have that many practices, I didn't do quite enough. That's on me. That's a learning moment. After that we got a handful days to get them ready and I thought we were ready tonight. And now the good news is we got two days built in before we play again and then we get another bye week until we go play ETSU."
 
Raven Thompson, So., F
On chemistry with Jada Guinn
"Just trusting in each other. Knowing what the job is and getting it done."
 
On getting back to playing speed after injury
"I'm getting back to 100%. I just learned and helped my teammates by me being out."
 
Jada Guinn, Gr., G
On the chemistry with Raven Thompson
"I think that just goes to how teams kind of guard us. They know that we're both really good players for our team. If people are doubling Ray then that opens things up for me and if people are kind of paying more attention to me that just opens things up for Ray. We just trust in what Coach Poppie is running for us and able to do what we can for our team."
 
On how the time without games affected the team
"I think that's just what some teams have to go through. We went through a stretch where we were playing back-to-back and then a stretch where we weren't really playing games. I think that's just going to staying focused on the what the end goal is. We know we want to win a championship and even though we weren't playing games, we knew what we had to do each and every day."