Head Coach Tara VanDerveer Opening Statement:
I thought tonight was an excellent team effort. From the opening tip, we established our defense and rebounding. It was great to see everyone contribute. Santa Clara is a team that executes well, but our size was a big factor.
On the depth of this year's team:
We can count on our depth. It was good to see a lot of different people contribute. We had a lot of people working hard on the defensive end, crashing the boards and playing well offensively. One advantage of having depth is that players can play hard and pace themselves knowing we're able to bring someone else in. It may hurt us in that we don't have a set rotation, but I'm interested in seeing people play in game situations. One player tonight who, as I say "made some deposits" was Enjoli Izidor. She's worked hard in practice and played great tonight. Also, our bench played within themselves, which was important.
On playing a somewhat smaller lineup:
I thought we would matchup better with a smaller lineup. I normally don't like a smaller lineup, but I thought we could defend better and had a better matchup that way. But, our post players played well. Now, we don't just have three players down low, but also we have two or three freshman knocking on the door, and that's good.
On rest of the homestand:
I'd like to repeat this one for our next three. We need to keep improving, keep playing better defense and executing better.