Jan. 19, 2012
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No. 8 Maryland 86, Wake Forest 58
Jan. 19, 2012
College Park, Md. (Comcast Center)
Maryland Head Coach Brenda Frese
Opening Statement:
"I thought it was a very inspired second half. We really came out and played with a lot of energy. I thought we were really unselfish with how we played for each other. We had an inside-out attack. You look pretty good when you have rebounding machines like the two that I have next to me (Tianna Hawkins and Alyssa Thomas). It was a special night to be able to see Tianna break the rebounding record. I have never seen anyone get 24 rebounds in a game. It was a special night and I am very proud of her for all the hard work that she has put in."
On her son's Tyler health:
"He is still in the hospital. He caught a cold while he was in treatment. He can't fight off a common virus right now. His fever broke which is good. Now he needs to get his white blood cell count up. It needs to get up to 200 and it is at 36 right now. We are taking it day-by-day."
On what changed in the second half:
"I thought we did a much better job on No. 5 (Chelsea Douglas). She did a tremendous job shooting the three. We did a better job on locking down, communicating and getting outside to the three point line. We got stops and allowed our defense to go to our offense."
On Tianna Hawkins breaking the single game rebounding record:
"I asked the team if we should let her come back in and they unanimously said yes. That record has been in the record book for a very long time. It is special for us to be able to break records."
On taking this energy into the Duke game:
"We felt like we needed to get our energy back. Hopefully now we can play a 40 minute game now. That is what we strive for. It is going to take a lot more work than what we did tonight, going on the road and into Cameron Indoor Stadium. It is a lot of fun coaching this team. They know what is at stake. They know what it's like to go into Cameron and will be fully prepared. I want the team to come out and play for 40 minutes. When we come out and play like we did in the second half we are a special team. That's what we are going to have to have to go down there and win."
Sophomore Forward Alyssa Thomas
On starting off slow then getting hot in the second half:
"I think at the beginning I was forcing things and trying to get my shot going. Then I let the game come to me and let my teammates get open. I figured that once they got their game going mine would come too."
On her improved performance after the Virginia game:
"For this game I had to relax and not pressure myself as much so I could just play basketball and enjoy myself."
Junior Forward Tianna Hawkins
On setting the Maryland record for most rebounds in a game:
"I'm just happy that I was able to do something in the game to help the team out. It means a lot to me to go into the record books at the same time."
On getting 24 rebounds:
"I actually had no idea I had that many. When [Coach Frese] came in at halftime and said that I had 15 rebounds, I was shocked. But when I got that last rebound, it felt really good. My teammates were pushing me to get that last rebound and the crowd was also pushing me to get it, so it felt good to have everyone commend me on that."
Wake Forest Coach Mike Petersen
Opening statement:
"I'm very disappointed that the ACC voted down my proposal to play 20-minute games. That would have made this evening more enjoyable. [Maryland is] really good. I thought our zone bothered them a little bit and allowed us to get the tempo right. We want to play fast, and in the first half, I thought we were dictating the tempo pretty good. Our zone bothered them a little bit in the first, but in the second half - I'm pretty sure this is right - they got back their first six misses. I told Brenda [Frese] this before the game, that's the best offensive-rebounding team I've ever seen, when I watched them on film. They're getting back - and tonight's game will help them - but they're getting back 58 or 59 percent of their misses for the season. That's what you call a statistical oddity. I don't know how that happens."
"What happened in the second half, they get back their first six and now it's blood in the water. Now we've encouraged them to go, and they didn't need any encouragement. They go pretty hard on their own; they didn't need us encouraging them that much. To me that was the difference. They had 40 misses and they got back 24 of them. That's 60 percent of their misses. You can't beat anybody if they're getting back 60 percent of their misses. I thought that was a difference, but I liked us in the first half. Our zone bothered them a little bit. I loved that Lakevia [Boykin] and Chelsea [Douglas] shot the ball better. Chelsea's been arguing with her jumper a little bit and tonight Chelsea and her jumper were kind of in agreement. That'll help us moving forward, but to play a team like that on the road and be able to deal with them, you've got to be more efficient than we were."
On Wake Forest's play:
"You look at both the halves. I mean, that's ball; you look at both halves. What I told them what they proved was they are capable of playing with anybody in the country, anywhere in the country. The problem is what we proved in the second half is if we're not just right, we've got problems. I like this team. It hurt us a little bit that Asia Williams broke her leg in the last game, and she's kind of a toughness rebounding kid for us. We've really got to pick up her slack. I think we take both of those away. I think you take the first half and say, there's a positive of what we did tonight, and it was very positive. But then in the second half, there's plenty of negative to go around there. The beauty of basketball is, you don't have too much time to dwell on either side. What's today, Thursday? We've got to play Sunday. Get on the plane and go to class. Giddy up horsey and let's go play Clemson."
On Maryland's defense in the second half:
"I think they got into Lekevia better. We didn't rebound the ball, and a lot of Lekevia's play in the first half were in transition. We didn't have transition in the second half because we didn't get a rebound. That's a slight exaggeration, but we didn't get hardly any rebounds. Part of her efficiency in the first half was in transition. In the second half we didn't have very much transition, and then in the half court I thought Maryland did a very nice job of locating her. And in the second half we never really finished around the rim. I thought Lindsy Wright had a couple, I thought Sandra Garcia had a couple, I thought Mykala Walker had a couple [chances]. In the second half, it was kind of 1-on-0 little 4-footers in the lane. The problem is if you don't start making those, then the defense never compresses. If the defense doesn't compress, your shooters have trouble getting space."
