Nov. 15, 2009

Notre Dame Women’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Arkansas – Pine Bluff
November 15, 2009 ” Purcell Pavilion, Notre Dame, Ind.

Arkansas – Pine Bluff Quotes

Head Coach Cary Shelton

On Notre Dame’s Press and the problems it created for the team…
“Wow. They gave us some fits earlier in the game, and we knew what it was going to be like before we got here but not to that magnitude. They just lure you into it. They just walk you right smack into it. They play the passing lane exceptionally well. We were using chest passes trying to break it, and you can’t do that against the number seven team in the country. You’ve got to take care of the ball, and we didn’t do that tonight.”

On (Tashayla) Jackson and what she means to the team…
“Tashayla (Jackson) is a senior. She’s the captain of our team. She keeps the girls in line. She’s a coach on the floor. We’re certainly happy to have her, and she’s a local talent out here. This is her senior year and for her to come back here was really big for us. That’s all she talked about. We had a nice little cheering squad behind us. We’re glad to have her.”

Notre Dame Quotes

Head Coach Muffet McGraw
Opening Statement…
“I thought offensively we did some pretty good things. Our transition game was good; I thought we had more assists than turnovers, which was pretty astounding considering the number of turnovers we had today. I was disappointed with our rebounding and our three-point defense, I think we still have a lot of work to do. But first game, maybe some jitters, we were a little sloppy, very sloppy actually. We’ve definitely got a lot of things to tighten up.”

On the amount of turnovers…
“The turnovers were mostly a product of the tempo of the game, I think we tried to play too fast and with. We’re definitely trying to get Kaila [Turner] and Brittany [Mallory] some work, she’s done a nice job at the point… but we had a lot of really bad decisions, which led to the big amount of turnovers.”

On individual players…
“I thought that Becca [Bruszewski] went back out after half time and rebounded particularly well, she was inside and did exactly what we had been working on with her running the middle of the floor and getting down on the block. I was really pleased with her offensive game and her ability to score in the paint. I thought that Erica [Williamson] did really well; she was only supposed to get in for a maximum of 8 minutes, so she got a little tired at the end of the game, but she worked through it. Fraderica [Miller] was very aggressive offensively, she worked very hard, she didn’t foul, she worked the boards and did a really nice job for us tonight.”

On playing in Purcell Pavillion…
“You really got a sense of how loud this place can get, especially during the introductions. The crowd was really electric right from the beginning of the game. After we started rolling and making some nice plays, it was almost deafening.”

Becca Bruszewski – Jr. – F
On scoring underneath…
“They sat in a 2-3 zone and I was really just cutting in the lane and looking to drive, those are easy buckets. I wasn’t really hitting well from outside, so I had to clean up in the paint.”

Skylar Diggins – Fr. – G
On making her debut…
“Oh I was definitely nervous out there tonight, especially on a Sunday night you’re always anxious to get out there after waiting all day.”

Ashley Barlow – Sr. – G
On the possibility of opening game jitters…
“I personally wasn’t nervous going into the game, we just tried to get out there and be intense right from the beginning. I think that a lot of the turnovers were because of team jitters, being the first game in the new building, everybody was anxious to play.”