University of Tennessee Athletics
2006 NCAA SOCCER 1ST ROUND UAB VS. TENNESSEE
November 10, 2006 | Soccer
Nov. 10, 2006
Tennessee Head Coach Angela Kelly:
"I'm very, very proud of my team's performance this evening. We had a lot of quality scoring opportunities that we fi nished. I challenged the team in pre-game to compete tonight and they did. This is a great way to start the NCAA Tournament. We'll enjoy this for a couple of hours and then begin to prepare for Duke on Sunday."
Defender/Midfielder Jordan Falcusan (on her long goal to open the scoring):
"When I shot the ball I thought `Oh no!' I'm supposed to try to get a touch, but I was afraid I'd let my captain (Ali Christoph) down. When I saw the ball going for the far post, I knew I was ok because that's what Ange (Kelly) has stressed to us. We executed, and I'm glad I got the ball on goal. I went into the play just thinking someone else would be on the end of it."
(on Jaimel Johnson's first big save): "Having her back there in goal for us tonight was awesome. When she went for the ball, I was praying she wouldn't come down wrong on her collarbone. We were all worried about her health, but we knew she'd be ok to dive. Having her back there gave us more confi dence in the game."
Forward/Midfielder Mick Imgram (on the goal by Falcusan with a minute left in the first):
"We always talk about the fi rst and last fi ve minutes of the half being important. Getting that goal was very important to our team."
Goalkeeper Jaimel Johnson (on her first diving save):
"I'll admit my pre-game warm-up was not my best pre-game warm-up. I hesitated in warm-up on some plays just like the one I made during the game. When she shot it, I knew that it was the NCAA's -- it was do-or-die. For my teammates I just had to let it go."
UAB Head Coach Paul Harbin:
"Well this is certainly not the way we wanted to end our season. I felt we started the game out well. I wasn't excited to see Jaimel Johnson back in goal for them. She was tremendous. I felt that if we could have got a little momentum...but she made several great saves for them. That makes it more diffi cult on us. If we sneak in one of those early chances, maybe this game goes differently. The second goal by UT really took some of the energy out of us. They look like they are putting things back together at the end of the year."
Forward Jill Porto (on game plan):
"I don't think this was one of our better games. We didn't dominate in the air like we wanted, and we turned our back to goal too much. Our energy was good to start, but their second goal took a lot of our energy."
Defender Laura Richards:
"When we went into our conference tournament, we agreed we needed to pick it up. We came out here tonight and didn't have the energy we did before. We certainly could have played better."
