Pitt Women's Basketball Postgame Quotes
12/4/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Pitt Head Coach Suzie McConnell-Serio
Opening Statement:
“Today was somewhat of a struggle. Offensively we could not find any rhythm, especially with players getting into foul trouble. It forced us to change some things and get different combinations on the board. When you have two starting post players out of the game for much of the fourth quarter, it made a difference for us tonight. I’ve watched a lot of their [Charlotte] games and they play an up tempo game. We talked about defending the first five seconds on the shot clock because they push in transition and advance in layups or wide open threes. If you relax after a score, they look to take it to you. They are a team that utilizes their personnel very well. With the system that they run they are very athletic and long, and they created a matchup problem with us at times. We tried to find an offense and it didn’t match up with the athleticism on their defensive end. It was a disappointing day across the board. Giving up 70 points, on a day when your offense struggles, you have to be able to depend on your defense to make stops. We just didn’t get enough stops.”
On noticing a difference in the team after the Purdue loss:
“I think we had the same struggle shooting the basketball. Charlotte made plays. The difference was when we had a stretch where we went 2-17 in the fourth quarter. We had a number of players taking shots. We didn’t have a go-to player that we were trying to play through. We are not a team that has a go-to player when it is crunch time. We are a game-by-game team. When we wanted to go inside our option would have been Kalista Walters because Brandi [Harvey-Carr] and Brenna [Wise] were on the bench after fouling out. We had three-point shooters on the floor, we just didn’t convert. When you can’t hit shots against the zone, they are going to try to stay in as much as they can, and it continued to cause us problems.”
On Kauai Bradley’s performance:
“Right now Kauai [Bradley] is having some struggles, more mental than anything. We are trying to get her to play through it. She had good practices coming into the game. For whatever reason, these past two games I can see a difference in her confidence level, such as fumble passes and on her drives and mishandles. She’s not the same player that we’ve seen in the first six games that we have in the last two. For us to be successful we have to get her back. She is the most athletic player on the team right now without Yacine [Diop]. She is a key to our defense whether it is man or our matchup zone. She definitely is a key to both ends of the floor, she’s a double figure scorer for us. We have to get her back for us to be successful. That is for sure. We’re not deep enough, and we need a balanced scoring attack and she is definitely a part of that.”
On Cassidy Walsh playing her first minutes of the season:
“Cassidy Walsh came off of the bench and gave us great energy. In the first half she was getting her hands on balls, getting deflections and steals. She had great energy. She hit a three pointer, had good ball movement within the offense and it was great to see her out there. It was good to have another option. But with that, when you put Cassidy and Alayna [Gribble] on the floor, we didn’t match up with their [Charlotte] athleticism and guards. It was great to see Cassidy out on the floor today.”
Pitt Forward Brenna Wise
On being one of the two leading scorers against Charlotte:
“Both of us combined had 26 points of our 63 shots. That is a little over half of our team shots, so I would say that we all contributed. We have to get our percentage up as a team. We have to be more consistence and finish the game.”
On noticing a change in the team after the loss to Purdue:
“We came with fire. We take every game one at a time. We want to wipe the slate clean but also have a little bit of fire in us taken from the loss. We had two great days of practice and we were ready to come out strong. It just didn’t happen. Once again, it is adding fuel to our fire and making us stronger every day.”
On the second quarter:
“With our defense, it is going to create our offense. Again, if we limit them [Charlotte] to nine points and we score twenty-three that means we are playing both ends of the floor. We ran in transition, posted up strong and we moved the ball well. If we carry that over to every single quarter, we have a game.”
On Pitt’s play in the second half:
“They [Charlotte] came out losing in the second half. They came out the locker room and I’m sure their coach got them fired up. We might have been a little too comfortable with our lead, which was a small lead. With that being said, they came out with some fire and we got hit first. We dug ourselves into a hole early that we needed to take ourselves out of and we struggled there.”
On her and teammate Brandi Harvey-Carr fouling out:
“I’m going to be held accountable. I should be able to play smarter than that and myself in better positions. Brandi [Harvey-Carr] plays both sides of the floor and she plays hard. We are not going to get every call and it is not going to be a perfect game. The officials do the best they can to officiate and we do the best that we can do to play. We can’t change the outcome of that. It definitely hurts having two of your starting post players on the bench when there is five minutes left in the game and we’re down a few points. We have the team capable to finish with the win but we didn’t come up with it today.”
