George Washington University Athletics
GW/Dayton Post-Game Quotes
1/9/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 9, 2010
NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
January 9, 2010
Dayton 59
@ GW 55
Post-Game Quotes
GW Coach Mike Bozeman
Did you see some good things come out of this game?
"Yes, Dayton is a good basketball team. [Coach Jabir] has done a great job with them, and they've been right in or hovering around the top 25 all year long, and I understand why. They execute very well, they play hard...[but] even I'm growing tired of being inches away from having the success I desire and my team desires. But I did see some good things. My team is tough, we're executing better. It's just those `freshman mistakes' that we make at crucial times of games that we need to clean up."
You held Dayton below their scoring and rebounding averages. Talk about your players' effort today.
"Those are some of the positives that I take away from this game. On the board in our locker room, I put `100-percent GW basketball wins.' And I think that was about 85% today...It gets you a lot of things except more points at the end of the game."
Everybody scored today. Is it important to get balance in your scoring?
"It is. Our system doesn't have just one option, where I'm trying to get one player 20 shots. We have to gang rebound, gang score, gang assist, gang defend--we have to gang everything, and our gang is a gang of eight. I can't stop the growing pains, but I can try to shorten the curve, and that's we were going to try to do."
Sophomore center Sara Mostafa
How challenging was Dayton's size and depth?
"Brooke [Wilson] and I were just looking to box out every time in order to get rebounds, and we had to fight for them every time."
Were some of the problems self-inflicted?
"It seemed that every time we had a big play or went on a run, we'd have these turnovers. And that would change the pace of the game down....Toward the end of the game, because we're young, we don't know how to handle these situations. We have to get better at that...to know what to do at the right time to pull out the game."
Do you think you were trying to force things at the end of the game?
"I feel like sometimes we go into panic mode. We see the clock is winding down, and we're down, so we take the first available shot. We need to learn to gain our composure at the end of the game and know that we have the skills, we have the tools we need to make the shots, and then make them."
Dayton Coach Jim Jabir
This is Dayton's first win at GW. What's the significance of this victory?
"It's big because it's historic. To be the best team in the A-10, we have to start beating people. In that way, it's important. I know they've had a really good team, and now they're down with injuries, but life's not fair. So we have to take advantage of the opportunities. They're well-coached, they're very talented, and they'll get better. But for our program, this is a big win."
"There have been games that we've played very well here and lost...It's always good to leave a place with a win."
Does this win give your team a boost of confidence going into league play, similar to the Michigan State game?
"The last two years, we've had a lot of firsts, and this was another first. I think it does give us some confidence. When we were playing Michigan State, a lot of kids were sitting in the locker at halftime thinking `oh my goodness, we can play with them.' It was an awareness that they'd never had before, a realization. So we have a lot of realizations going on now, and they're all good ones."
