George Washington University Athletics
GW/Fordham Post-Game Quotes
2/20/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 20, 2010
NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
February 20, 2010
@GW 56
Fordham 47
GW Coach Mike Bozeman
Opening statement
"I'm happy with the win, but I'm a little disappointed with our execution. I've got to get the girls to bring what we're doing in practice to the game floor. But I'm impressed with the fortitude to hang in there and pull out a win for us. Every win is important because we're trying to get into the tournament, and we needed this one tonight. I'm still optimistic about our chances if we can get into the tournament. I think we have yet to play our best basketball, and if it happens in the tournament, we're going to upset some people."
It seemed that things started to click around the 3:00 mark. Did you say anything in the huddle to make that happen?
"We can play as good as we focus. And our focus as a team rose a little bit at that time. We started getting the job done in a more efficient manner."
How did you plan on defending Randall Hurst?
"The intent was to front her, but I if you look at the stats, her going 6 for 18, she's bound to hit some of those. For the most part, she was using her body position very well. We have to get better at defending the post. There were flashes where we contained her, and sometimes she got too deep on the post. We're working on fronting the post every day and we didn't do a very good job of that tonight."
You were successful with the half-court trap in the first half. Why didn't you use it as much in the second half?
"Fatigue. The fatigue factor is what we have to work with. It wore us down a little bit in the first half. I tried to pick and choose when I was going to use it in the 2nd half, and a couple of times I got good results when I surprised them with it. But that's part of the dilemma when you're low in numbers and nursing some injuries. It's strategic so to conserve our legs so that we could have the burst at the end of the game."
You had a lot of turnovers in the first half, but only three in the second. Did you address that at halftime?
"Pretty loudly. [laughs] That was a focus. Another one was attacking the rebounds, which I call `effort points'... We pushed the limit on rebounds and cutting down turnovers, and felt that doing that would get us the victory."
Sophomore guard Tiana Myers
What did you do in the second half to start scoring more points?
"In the first half, I was in foul trouble so I sat out like 9 or 10 minutes. In the second half, I became more aggressive. I knew what was at stake, and that we needed the win. So I executed what the coaches asked me to."
Did the extended break from games help refresh the team?
"It did because we got the rest that we needed. but at the same time, we still need the experience of the games."
Fordham Coach Cathy Andruzzi
Opening statement "I thought our players did a good job today. We lost some key shots, and that hurt us a great deal. And in the end of the day, you've got to make free throws. When you go to the free throw line 19 times away from home, you're awful lucky. Our girls did a great job of being aggressive and attacking the rim, and forcing GW to foul us. But we made only 52 percent from the free throw line. And when you miss 9 free throws--and a lot of them were one-and-one opportunities, that to me was a big part of the game."
"GW is a very talented team, and we were right there with them. We were down by three and made two turnovers in a row, which really hurt us at the end. But I can't say enough for the resiliency and hard work that our players showed today. I thought we had chances to close at the end, but we didn't make them and that hurt us. But we only turned the ball over 10 times, had 9 steals, and 11 assists, so we had some good numbers."
What did GW do that put them over the top?
"GW got to the rim and made some key shots, but at the end of the day, I thought it was what we did, not what GW did. We had the opportunity to go ahead several times, but we didn't. You've got to make free throws and you've got to make shots. We stopped their half-court offense, but they got a combination of 23 points from fast-break points and offensive rebounds. And every time we got to the line, we made one shot, and they came back and made 3. You can't win ball games like that."
