University of Tennessee Athletics
TENNESSEE vs. UCONN - POST-GAME QUOTES
January 07, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 7, 2006
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery
TENNESSEE HEAD COACH Pat Summitt:
"I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say that I was excited about our defense, but we found a way to reach down and win. Sidney Spencer did some great things. Our guards didn't shoot well. It was a super environment. I don't know how you couldn't get excited about this game. In the end, we found a way to win. I think we gained from our experience against Maryland. We ground it out. Connecticut is a quality opponent that knows hot to play on this kind of stage."(on the play of Shanna Zolman) "Shanna (Zolman) was struggling. She was able to get herself open and go to the free throw line. She was pressing. They were keying on her. She made some key free throws down the stretch. She's a player that always wants the ball."
(on the performance of Sidney Spencer) "I think she got over it. She hasn't been starting well. I told her to get over it because she's going to start. With her size, she has a big presence against the zone. She needs to become more aggressive without the ball. She played with a lot of composure. She has every reason to be confident. She's not always assertive, but she's beginning to understand 'my' role on this team. I'm proud of the progress that she has made and the impact she had on this game."
(on the play of Alexis Hornbuckle) "Once she relaxed, offensive she got more aggressive. She is one of the best rebounding guards that we have had at Tennessee. She's relentless on the boards and has a great vertical leap. She came up with several loose balls. She stepped up after struggling in the first half."
(on Hornbuckle having to play extensive minutes) "We've got to get another perimeter player. I thought (Dominique) Redding played well in the first half. Dominique and Lindsey Moss are going to have to handle the ball for us. I told Dominique that she's going to have to become a guard and handle the ball more in order to take some pressure off of Lex (Alexis Hornbuckle)."
(on the high score) "I can't believe the points being scored in this game. These are two programs that take pride in their defense. I would not have expected this. I thought the score would be in the mid-70s."
(on Tennessee playing more zone defense) "Sometimes in the past, we might have played more man-to-man defense. Maybe I was too stubborn. Connecticut is a great offensive team. They have great rhythm and spacing. We changed up our defenses to try to take them out of their rhythm. (Ann) Strother is obviously their go-to. She had too many open threes. I was disappointed we didn't do a better job on our scout defense."
(on Connecticut freshman point guard Renee Montgomery) "I liked Renee. If we thought that we had needed a point guard (in that recruiting class), we would have been battling Connecticut for her. In hindsight. . . .She did a great job for them. Alexis (Hornbuckle) and Renee played well together in high school with four state championships. They competed well against each other today."
(on inside-outside game) "We tried to get the ball inside, but we weren't patient. We got the ball inside to Candace (Parker). We thought we could open up our outside game by going inside. Candace made a great play getting the ball to Sidney (Spencer). We have to continue to have balanced scoring. We've had four players in double figures. That makes us harder to defend."
(on the atmosphere) "It was electrifying. When I'm coaching, I tend to have tunnel vision. I don't hear real well. It was great for national television and for women's basketball. This is a rivalry that is special in women's basketball on the national scene."
(on how this game compares with others this season) "Stanford was tough. Playing on the road at Stanford was tough. Today went back and forth. I'd say it was in the top three (games this season). They said that Connecticut was going to be down this season. They're not down. They're very much alive. It was a hard fought game. It was a tough 40 minutes."
"Today, I was blessed. My three teammates sitting here drew the attention on defense. They needed a double team to defend them, and that was leaving me open so they could kick the ball out to me to get the open shot." (on the performance of Sidney Spencer) "I'll pass to Sidney any day when she's shooting like that. She made the shots. I was able to find her in transition or in sets. She was very key today in both halves.""My shot was not falling. I was trying to get the ball inside or get to the free throw line. I have to keep continually moving and trying to do anything to get the ball inside to Sid (Spencer) or inside. It was a team effort. All five players on the court were crucial."
"Our emphasis was on the team. Sid (Spencer) was shooting well. We wanted to go inside, and it opened things up. How we scored today was free throws and Sid."
(on the win) "It always feels good. This was the first time that we had played them on 'The Summitt' (since the floor had been renamed for Coach Summitt), and we didn't want to lose on our floor. That was the emphasis in our mind. We've won the past two (against Connecticut). Hopefully, that can continue on. It's just a game. We've got to get ready for conference again."
(on the atmosphere) "It was a great experience. It didn't click until we stepped out on the court. The crowd was great."(on foot injury in the second half) "I rolled my foot. Obviously, I can't run. I tripped over my own feet. It'll be alright."
"I was shooting very poorly, so I stepped it up on the defensive end. I always try to be conscientious on rebounding and defense and contribute more than scoring. I knew my shot wasn't falling."(on the performance of former high school teammate Renee Montgomery) "Renee played well. I thought she handled things well. In a situation like that, you can do good or bad. Coach (Summitt) said that I was being way too nice to her in the first half. I look at her as another guard. We can be friends off the court but not on the court. I wasn't trying to be nice. I was just trying to play my game. Welcome to the collegiate level."
CONNECTICUT HEAD COACH GENO AURIEMMA:
"You know what I think? I think that, first of all, I don't believe on moral victories. We're not some new program that comes in here and tries to put up a good show. We're the University of Connecticut. When we tee it up, we expect to win. So, having said that, we didn't win. We're really, really disappointed in ourselves. I have a bunch of kids in the locker room right now that feel pretty bad that they got beat -- by a very good Tennessee team, by the way. I do think we got exactly what the outcome of this game should have been. Are we as big and as strong and as talented as Tennessee right now? No. Alexis Hornbuckle got more done out there that Ketia Swanier, Mel Thomas and Renee Montgomery combined. Points, assists, rebounds, steals - you name it. So I think the way our guards played, where they are right now, they're young, sophomores, freshmen. I think right now, the outcome was what it was supposed to be. Could we have stolen the game? Maybe. Are we smart enough as a basketball team right now to do that? Not yet. Not on January 7, we're not. Not to come down here in this environment.""Tennessee had 27 points from the free throw line in the second half. If somebody came up to UConn and played us and we scored 27 points from the free throw line in the second half, I don't think we'd lose a game, ever, for the rest of my career. So you cannot give a really good team opportunities like that and think you're going to win the game. So, here we are, January 7, on the road, (against) the No. 1 team in the country, and they got what they deserved. They should have won. They shot the ball well from the three-point line, they shot free throws well, they rebound the ball well. And we got what we should have gotten, given where we are right now. I'm not happy about it, but if you'd asked me a month ago how I'd feel about it, I'd feel a lot different now than I did a month ago. And hopefully a month from now, I'll feel twice as good as I feel right now about our team. About our effort, about what we did."
"There's a reason why there was 22,000 people at the arena tonight. They knew it was going to be a good game. Doesn't matter what our record is, doesn't matter what their record is, doesn't matter what's happened in the last week or two weeks or three weeks or the last month."
(on the play of Renee Montgomery) You know, if you were to say to me, 'Who probably feels worse than anybody in our locker room?' it's probably Renee. You're playing against your teammate from high school (??) and I think she feels terrible about the fact that, first, that we lost, and second, nobody got a chance to see whether Renee Montgomery is a good player or not. She's been a good player for us up to this point. I remember coming down here with Rita Williams her first year and a very similar thing happened. And Rita became one of the best players to ever play for us. It's something you have to go through, I think.
(on the play of Charde Houston) Charde doesn't know any of our defenses, she doesn't know who she's supposed to guard, whether we're in zone, man...she really doesn't know any of that stuff. She doesn't know any of our plays....She just wanders around, gets the ball and scores. So imagine a month from now, two months from now, when she actually knows the plays we're running, what defense we're in and all that other good stuff, she's going to be as good of a player as there is in the country.
(on playing such a high-scoring game) What did we score, 80 points? Yeah, we scored 80 points and lost. I was just making fun of somebody, I think it was (St. Joseph's men's coach) Phil Martelli, my friend at St. Joe's. I said, 'You guys have scored 94 points twice and lost.' Now we score 80 points and lose. That's hard to do, you know. But, at the same time, when you're putting people on the free throw line a lot, those things tend to happen. And when you've got as many good offensive players as Tennessee does, you're not going to be able to...I mean, we did a good job in the first half of keeping it under control. Second half, it was just too much for us. But, you know, Ann (Strother) and Charde, I thought, played at about the level they're at right now. When you get those two playing like that, and Brittany came off the bench and gave us a lot that she thought she was capable of giving us at this point in time. So you've got 3 pretty good offensive players that had a pretty good day for us. I'm glad we scored 80, but anytime you give up 89, you're not going to feel so hot about it.
(on Tennessee's offense) They're hard to guard, they're so long and athletic. We go into the game thinking, 'Let's make sure Shanna Zolman doesn't get a lot of open looks.' So she makes one field goal. But how many things can you take away from them? And then Sidney Spencer had the game of her life. Our coaches scouted her, and said, 'Oh, don't worry about her, she's averaging one 3-pointer made a year...I mean, a game.' She made one every 5 minutes, it seemed like. They just have way too many weapons, you just have to hope you get a little help from them. In the first half, we got a little help from them, and kept our composure, played well, didn't make a lot of mistakes. We just couldn't duplicate that in the second half.
(on Alexis Hornbuckle) I don't think she's really a point guard, but she's playing like a real team leader right now. She had a reputation coming out of high school that she's a scorer. I think with all the scorers that they have, all the weapons they have, she's become really, really good at distributing the ball. The fact that she fills up the stat sheet, rebounding-wise, assist-wise, steal-wise. She had the kind of game that Sue (Bird) and Diana (Taurasi) used to have when they came down here. When you get guard play like that, it's awfully hard to lose. When you get somebody that does as many things that Alexis did today, it's difficult to beat a team like that.
(on Brittany Hunter) I've been telling everybody that Brittany has a chance to be one of the better players in America. And when you say that, you look at her, you see the things that she can do. And you forget that she hasn't played in a year and a half, and she's coming off the kind of surgery that most people don't ever play with again. And here she is, in a huge game like this, against really, really talented kids. And she got a couple of rebounds that only she could get. Made a couple of plays inside that only she could make. I'd love to get to the point where, come March, we could get 30 minutes out of Brittany Hunter. We don't have anybody like her, so when we play teams like LSU and Tennessee, her and Charde are going to be huge.
CHARDE HOUSTON
(on battling injuries): "As far as my foot goes, I feel fine. Coming out to the game this afternoon, I didn't want to let that be a factor. Whatever happened, I just wanted to play."(on the team's chemistry at this point) On the floor, we feel like we're playing harder than we did in the North Carolina game. We look to each other, we confide in each other. We're doing a better job coming together as a team.
