Postgame Quotes: Lady Vols 131, Troy 69

Tennessee Head Coach Holly Warlick

Opening Statement:
"A couple things we were concerned about before tonight's game: transition defense. Troy was outstanding in that category, and I'm really proud of our kids. We held them to 15 points. We worried about their offensive rebounding and held them to 18. We've really worked hard the last two weeks on those two things, and I know you can see how we're improving and getting better. We were concerned about our turnovers. They were averaging turning people over 29 times, and we had 14. To say I'm proud and excited for our group, I am. I thought everybody contributed and did some really nice things for each other which led to an outstanding performance of our team."

On the stats she likes the most:
"I love 38 assists, I love 14 turnovers, and I especially love 88 points in the paint. You get 88 points in the paint, you're going to shoot a high percentage, and we almost shot 60%. I love that."

On redshirt junior forward Cheridene Green's aggressiveness when rebounding:
"Cheridene is a blue-collar worker, and that's what she does. She pursues the basketball. She gets her points off rebounds and putbacks. She's still coming into her own. We talked, and all I asked of Cheridene is to do what she does, and you can see that she did exactly that. She had 13 rebounds in 20 minutes. That's just a kid that has a big heart and that loves to play the game. She's physical, and she plays the game the way she likes to play it."

On Tennessee's 38 assists:
"It's not too often you have a kid have 12 assists like Evina Westbrook. Evina gives us confidence to be able to pass the basketball. She sees the floor, and it's contagious. With this team, the ball doesn't get stuck in their hands. It just doesn't get stuck in their hands, and they love to move the ball and distribute the ball, all of them. We're just a lot better passing team, and I've said this a lot, our turnovers are—Cheridene, I told her, she's good for one turnover (where she) just throws the ball out of bounds a game—but the rest are turnovers trying to make things happen, not turnovers dribbling off of your foot. As long as we're trying to make plays and get us a better shot, I'm okay with it. Now, we have to cut that down, but I like us being aggressive and trying to lead another player to a better shot."

On determining where this team stands right now and how Sunday's game will be an indicator:
"The Cancun trip was really big for us. We played three really tough teams in a row. I was concerned about that. The fatigue and the physical play, it really did not affect us. You look at our Marquette game, and we had three starters foul out, and this team didn't even falter. You didn't see it in their eyes. They were like, 'We're getting this done.' When I see how we played in Cancun, it gives me a lot more confidence. I think it gives them more confidence too of what we're trying to do and that's play together, play great defense, get on the boards and try to get quality shots. I think you see the result of that. Now, we know Texas is a different beast. They can't be ranked number two in the country without being outstanding, and we understand that. It's going to be a great challenge for us and something that I think our kids are looking forward to."

On what she is expecting from Tennessee against No. 2 Texas:
"To me, Texas is a great transition team offensively, and they're a great offensive rebounding team. We've been emphasizing that for the last two weeks, trying to clean up what we need to do. They're a veteran team. They're not ranked two in the country just because. They're solid and they have a great leader in Brooke McCarty. (Ariel) Atkins is a special young lady who plays hard all of the time. She's one of the best on-ball defenders that I've seen in the game in a while. They just have solid people in every opposition and it will be a great challenge for us. We were talking about it in the locker room; we're excited for the challenge."

On takeaways from tonight to prepare for No. 2 Texas:
"The transition offense. Texas is going to do the same thing. They're one of the best offensive rebounding teams I have seen on tape. Troy was doing a really good job as well. We've played some teams to help us prepare for Texas. Troy looks for shooting the three, and Texas does too. Similarities, Texas has more overall talent but the style is the same."

On senior guard/forward Jaime Nared's performance:
"I thought Jaime set the tone for us. She took great shots. She didn't rush her shots. She didn't shoot off balance. She and I watched her shots after last game, and I just thought it was important for her to see when she takes shots off balance her percentage isn't high. She was solid in everything she did - three steals and a couple assists. She just has an outstanding game. I know what she'll say, and what I look at is Jaime Nared didn't have an offensive rebound. She's going to tell me with 27 points we didn't need an offensive rebound."

On having freshman center Kasiyahna Kushkituah back:
"Huge. I thought Kasi went in and did some solid things. She just practiced the last couple days sparingly. Kasi just needs repetition, and that's what most freshman do. They need repetition. They need to go up and down. They need to understand that the game is fast, it's physical. Probably the first time she went in in a Lady Vol uniform, she probably thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?' Now, I think she understands, and today was great for her. I'm glad she got the opportunity to play because she got some solid minutes and some getting up and down. She hasn't been practicing a lot, so this was good for her. We're going to need her. We're going to need her down the stretch. We're going to need her in the Texas game."

On a majority of the assists being by freshmen who were high school All-Americans:
"They are individual All-Americans, but they understand the point of being a team. I've never had a problem with any of our freshmen not understanding what we need to do as a team, and that's what makes these freshmen special to me. They're great players, but what they bring is the love for the game, the love for this program and the understanding that they need to help this program. What's great is that they want to distribute the basketball, then they have all these points, so sometimes we have to tell them to shoot the basketball. They're not concerned with who's starting, they just want to win the basketball game. When you get kids like that, they're special kids, and you're going to see success from your basketball team and I think you're seeing it there. We're playing together, and when a team plays together, great things happen."

On if she can pinpoint a moment when the freshmen started trusting each other:
"When they were at the All-American game and they stuck together, that's a great sign. They knew each other through AAU, but when they got in that environment, they all stuck together. That's great. And when they got on campus, classes tend to bond together, especially the freshmen because they're new and they don't know what to expect. Here's what they did different than a freshman group that we've had: they ask questions, and it's questions because they want to get better. They listen. They listen to their teammates. They don't listen all the time, but they're willing to listen to their teammates, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to make this team special and important. That's hard to come by. They want to be coached, and when a kid wants to be coached, great things are going to happen to them. You'll see the result of when they came in and how they are now, they've gotten better, and they're going to continue to get better because they're extremely coachable young ladies.

Senior Kortney Dunbar

On grabbing eight rebounds and what's different about this year's team:

"Holly's been on me, telling me if my shot isn't falling, maybe get inside and follow my shot, which I guess translates to rebounding. Tonight, I saw that I was getting more of my points inside, so that kind of made me want to go inside more, and like Holly said, keep crashing the boards. We've been working on that in practice a lot more, just rebounding. We have bigger girls coming in, we're going to have to get a lot more offensive rebounds. From the team perspective, like Jaime said, we're just a different team this year. You can feel it. You can feel it off the court; you can feel it on the court. When we step on the floor we're in attack mode, and I think what Holly has been implementing in practice is the game speed, the game style, and just the attitude that we play with in practice, because if we have that game speed and game style and game speed in practice, that's going to easily translate to the floor."

On building the team chemistry:

"I think what really helps is being here in June and July for summer school. I think that's where it starts. Everyone's coming from their hometown, everyone has their own records, and that kind of disappears when you all step on the floor together. We do a lot of team bonding stuff off the floor as a team, whether it's playing cards, going to dinner, and I think that's something that's very important. It may sound cliché, but when your team is that close where you can trust each other off the floor, that's what leads to on floor things such as the second-most assists in school history, because you want to see your teammates do as well as you, or you want to see your teammates do well, so I think being able to call freshmen after school and see if they need a ride somewhere, that's one of those small things that makes them be able to trust you on the floor and ask for advice."

Redshirt Junior Cheridene Green

On her chemistry in the post with Kasiyahna Kushkituah:

"That developed in preseason when we were with the post. We always work hard. It's a buddy system. We always work together, we always look out for each other, so we've always been doing that together."

On fighting for rebounds even while up by a wide margin:

"I've always had that mindset. I like to grab rebounds. When the rebounds go up, I'm like, 'I got it, I got it' or, 'That's mine, that's mine,' so I like to grab rebounds. I'm very physical, but since being here watching, I've seen how physical this conference is, so it's made me more determined and like 'Yeah, I'm supposed to be here, because I like this.'"

Senior Jaime Nared

On staying focused the entire game and not letting Troy get close:

"We have a different mentality this year. We knew that they were going to have a lot of possessions, we knew that they liked to play up-tempo. I think in our scouting report they had 99 possessions per game or something crazy like that. We knew it was going to be up-tempo, we knew we were going to have to play against a press every game and just be on attack mode every game."

On continuing to get off to fast starts to each game:

"It's important to get off to a fast start in any game. I think we've struggled with that in the past. It's good to know that everybody's ready, everybody's focused, and just let that carry over throughout the whole game. But I think a couple games we've had, we've started out great and then let the other team go on a run. Basketball is a game of runs, but we want to make the runs that other teams have smaller than ours. I think we did a pretty good job today of limiting theirs."

On how good she thought the team would be before the season started:

"We didn't really know because we hadn't played games, we just knew with what we had done in practice and what we saw in each other playing against our practice guys. Just the chemistry that we had on and off the court, how well we've played together, how well we've competed, it's just a different feeling. I just like that we're competing, first and foremost, and working hard, and people are still getting in the gym. Everybody wants to get better. Nobody is stagnant with the fact that we're 9-0 now. Everybody wants to get better."

Troy Head Coach Chanda Rigby Quick Quotes

Opening Statement:
"That wasn't fun for us at all. I think it was really fun for Tennessee. We were not going to change our style of play. It's really important in acclimating eight new players to our program this year. Our ultimate goal is to win the Sun Belt Conference, and to try to keep them pushing, doing special things on offense. We try to shoot 100 shots per game, so if we were just trying to keep it close, I'm sure we could've slowed it down and maybe cut their points down by about 25 percent. But, we kept doing what we did, and they basically shot 60 percent. We shot basically 29 percent. Both of us shot in the 90's. That's a lot of shots to get up. Their length, their athleticism had a lot to do with us missing shots. But, what I am disappointed at, is we did get kind of a deer-in-the-headlights look when our shots wouldn't fall. Usually, if we start cold, we're going to get hot. We just keep shooting, but we never really got hot. Then, we started playing really bad defense and let some uncharacteristically-bad attempts at stopping the ball happen."

On facing Tennessee this year versus last year:
"I think the Tennessee team last year versus the Tennessee team this year is night-and-day. I told everybody that. I watched them from the first game they played. I tried to watch every game they played this year, or the next day, if I couldn't watch it. I just like the team. I think they're more balanced. They seem to be more of a unit together, in my opinion. They're just more fluid than they were last year."

On having eight new players try to adjust to their quick style of play:
"Everybody that we have on the team, all eight of our new players, have the characteristics to be good at playing this style. But, we're still in an adjustment period. We try to shoot every seven seconds. A lot of times that works really well for us. Even last year, when we came in here, I think we were within striking distance at five points, until the last media timeout. We got hot. We just never got hot tonight. Again, with a lot of young players, we talked about before the game, don't flinch. Don't let anything take you out, be the next-play-up type of person. But, we did get taken out of, especially on defense."

On Tennessee's consistent play against her team:
"They didn't look sloppy at all, ever. I think, from top to bottom, it's a better team. I think they're going to do some things in the SEC this year, for sure."

On having a lot of players getting valuable minutes:
"We play everybody, and we rotate them around. Sometimes, we'll tune them in. There, once again, it's really a disadvantage a lot of times, at this time of year. A lot of times we're going up against the other coach's best eight, but we're rotating everybody in. It really works down the stretch. We won the Sun Belt Championship last year. We get good in the end, when we're supposed to. But, this was one of those painful learning experiences, and I hate it. In retrospect, would I have changed anything? When you look at how many points they scored, I guess so, but then again, my job is to get back there and get their confidence up. We don't play Tennessee in the Sun Belt Conference. We've got to take what we did well. One thing we did do well, we outscored them in the last five minutes. That's something to build on. That's something we said in the last media timeout. 'Hey, we're probably not going to get this game, but let's do what we can these last five minutes to show that we're not quitters.' They did. They outscored them the last five minutes."

Troy Guard Amanda Mendoza

On playing a fast style of basketball:
"I like playing at this pace. That's why I was brought into this program. Most of us were brought into this program because we can play this style of basketball. It's our favorite. We just shoot quickly and score quickly."

On matching up with Anastasia Hayes:
"It's fun. It's exciting to go against someone my height and to play against someone my speed."