Dec. 2, 2009

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Notre Dame Women’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Eastern Michigan
Purcell Pavilion – Notre Dame, Ind.
December 2, 2009

Notre Dame Quotes

Head Coach Muffet McGraw
On the game in general…
“I thought defensively we had some lapses in transition. We were uncharacteristically sloppy with the ball today. I thought Lindsay (Schrader) and Becca (Bruszewski) really played well. They did a nice job offensively and we didn’t get the ball to them enough. They were able to score inside and I thought we could have gone inside a little bit more. Coming back from a three-day tournament, you’re tired, you’re thinking about the paper that’s due, you’re not getting enough rest, and we just weren’t there mentally. Overall I just thought we weren’t in a good place and it showed. We were lucky to win the game. We were lucky they shot 2-15 from the three-point line because if they didn’t we probably would have lost the game. “

On the play of Eastern Michigan guard Tavelyn James…
“(Tavelyn) James played extremely well. We couldn’t catch her in transition and we did not run the floor with her. She was fantastic, I thought she had a great game.”

On Eastern Michigan’s defense…
“Their zone gave us problems. We worked on our zone offense yesterday, but it was bad yesterday too. We were worried about it coming in. They slowed us down a bit; we didn’t get the up-tempo points that we usually get. The press was marginally effective.”

On the post-game celebration of her 500th win at Notre Dame in the last game…
“It was a total shock to me. I asked our assistant coaches whether they were planning on presenting a ball or something and they said no. I’ve been so blessed to be able to coach at the University of Notre Dame. It’s such an amazing place; I count my lucky stars everyday.”

On her team’s rebounding…
“We didn’t have the effort to box out. We got out-hustled. It was disappointing all the way around.”

On the team’s mentality…
“I really believe that mentally we’re almost in final exam mode. We were sleep-walking. We got a little complacent and we just didn’t have any energy. We came out flat and played that way for forty minutes. I kept thinking we were going to get a run going but we just never did.”

On the Notre Dame offense…
“We can score in bunches. We’re capable of scoring a lot of points and it’s nice to see that we can win without scoring a lot of points. It would have been nice if we could have played better defense and had more of a cushion. We threw the ball away quite a bit when we were trying to score. We need to be a little more selfish and just say ‘hey I’m going to keep it and shoot it this time.'”

Lindsay Schrader – Sr. – G
On the outcome of the game…
“I’m just pleased with a win. This is the poorest we have played this year by far and yet we still won. I think our mentality is off right now. Coming back from the Virgin Islands, we had a bunch of papers due. This week is pretty hard and next week is pretty hard. We need to get down and focus. There are more games that we have to play.”

On her inside game…
“I would have been better if I made all of my layups. In practice we have been concentrating on getting the ball inside and our guards have definitely been looking for us. We just have to work on finishing.”

Becca Bruszewski – Jr. – F
On the outcome of the game…
“It was a weird game. We didn’t know what was wrong, it was just weird. It won’t happen again.”

On snapping out of it… “I think the fact that we buckled down and played for each other helped us. We weren’t playing the best that we could have together and individually we stepped up and tried to do little things to help.”

Eastern Michigan Quotes

Head Coach AnnMarie Gilbert

On the game in general…
“We’d certainly like to tip our hats to a good Notre Dame basketball team, I know they were banged up with some injuries, and we definitely respected this team coming in. We thought we had a pretty solid game plan and how to attack them. I also applaud the effort of our team and we have a young team that fought from the beginning of the game, and just to be able to out-rebound them and do some very positive things and I’m very pleased with that, but we still have a lot more work to do.

On the play of Tavelyn James…
“Tavelyn James is just an exceptional player, a player that went un-recruited. Everyone thought she was too small and again I applaud Notre Dame for putting one of their bigger players on her. That disrupted her a little bit but James is a player that is going to find a way. She really turned an average first half performance into something that is turning out to be a regular 20-plus point performance. She’s the real deal, and I’m glad that she was able to perform against such an outstanding team the way she did.”

On the play of the defense…
“Well, I had some insight on Notre Dame being an assistant at Michigan State prior to coming to Eastern Michigan. I really like Muffet (McGraw), I like what she does, but I really was a part of our defensive coordination at Michigan State and really took away some things. We really tried to isolate their shooters on the perimeter and force their interior to make some plays and they made the plays tonight. Their high-low attack really affected the inside of our matchup and again I give them credit for that. We thought that we could force those bigs to hurry and rush on making the plays, but they executed and unfortunately the ball went in the basket for them.”

On the second half play of the team…
“Ignorance is bliss for a young team, and that’s a good thing, but as a coach, you always think you have a chance to win the game. I thought that early in the game we held them quite well and forced them to move the ball, make some extra passes and play, and in the start of the second half when we made a few runs, I was real excited because I thought we put them on their heels for a change. I don’t think they expected that, and to see Muffet (McGraw) hold her head with her hands was positive, because that’s usually what I do. I kind of take that picture away, that was my lasting moment early in the half there. But again, a good team always finds a way and her players made plays down the stretch and we faltered a little bit. We didn’t get enough from our bigs tonight. We got some rebounding, but we just didn’t put the ball in the basket to help our guards out there.”