Jan. 9, 2010

Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery

Notre Dame Women’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Villanova
January 9, 2010 | Purcell Pavilion, Notre Dame, Ind.

Notre Dame Quotes

Muffet McGraw | Head Coach
On the game…
“I was really pleased with the game on both ends of the floor. I thought we played very well defensively, maybe even our best defensive effort of the season. We got a lot of pressure on the ball, starting with Skylar (Diggins) getting pressure on the ball. (Villanova) really had to work to get up the floor and in their offense. Devereaux (Peters) helped us a lot defensively, as well.”

On forcing 34 turnovers…
“This is a game that I don’t look forward to because of their style of play. They take such good care of the ball and move so well on offense. It’s a difficult game for us. I thought our pressure in the man-to-man was unbelievable, not only off the press, but in the half court defense, which is something we were really looking to see. Even at the end of the game Alena (Christensen) and (Fraderica Miller) are diving for balls. Kaila (Turner) came up and made some big plays.”

Melissa Lechlitner | Senior | Guard
On what worked well…
“I think a lot of things in our offense were working well. The pick-and-roll game was really working for us right off the get-go. When things are really working like that, and you can get little things within your offense working, it really helps to propel the rest of the game.”

On only having nine turnovers…
“I’ve just been trying to eliminate my really dumb turnovers. The ones where you can see the defense is there, especially on the post entry on the elbow, I had two today though. I’ve just been trying to work on timing and things like that, that we’ve really been working on in practice. Those are things you can control and keep from giving the other team easy points.”

Skylar Diggins | Freshman | Guard
On the plan of attack against Villanova…
“I think I’ve been attacking and understanding the defense, reading the defense and taking the shots the defense gives me. I started out doing it well and it kind of disappeared. I knew they were going to be sagging to coming off of the ball screens, (Melissa Lechlitner) and I both, we were looking to score. If they sat back too much, we looked for the shot and if they came too high we looked to dump it down low. Our posts did a good job of picking and rolling so that opened things up for us and then when we starting hitting shots that really opened things up for our posts.”

Villanova Quotes

Harry Perretta | Head Coach
On the game in general…
“We have very inexperienced players, usually when that happens that is going to be the result, what you saw out their tonight. I kind of know what is going to happen before it happens and you try to do as much as you can to stop it. We were on pace were we wanted to be but where the problem is we can’t play a certain group 40 minutes, we have to substitute and when we do that we started making multiple errors. “

On Maria Getty scoring seven points early, three after that…
“They stayed with her instead of helping and they lost her a couple times in the press early. Our philosophy is that if they press us we are going to attack the press because we can get an easier shot by attacking than by setting up if they press and trap us. We practiced on beating the press and getting a quick three. Then they stopped pressing us and obviously didn’t help off of her and didn’t lose her. It is easy to lose somebody when you are pressing somebody.”

On the high shooting percentge…
“I was actually laughing at halftime because our normal shooting percentage is in the low thirties. I was told at half time we were shooting 9-20 from the field and I was ready to have a party but then we realized we had 17 turnovers. We did actually shoot well and that is why I was excited cause we were actually shooting well. When the game was half court we had the game under control but then we had turnovers that hurt us.”r