(Neely) has a knack of finding her teammates and also knows when to take it to the hole. She's unselfish and just a tough competitor. |
I think as a coaching staff, we worked our tails off this year. We wanted to make sure we didn't have another 7-15 season for these kids. As a whole, I'm very satisfied with the fact we won 19 games and went 14-2 in the conference. A coach is never 100 percent satisfied, but I feel good about the season. |
I think the team has handled it well. It's helped having the (freshmen) accepted early on. With some teams, that wouldn't happen, but we have great kids, and they knows it's a team game. They want to win, and they see that having freshmen in the lineup makes us better. |
I think we did a really good job at that. We knew they were going to be tough. |
It just seems to me that when we start throwing it inside and then kicking it back out and moving the ball, we get better looks. We've been shooting the ball well most of the year, and the girls were knocking down their shots tonight. I thought Laura (Severson) really gave us a lift early. |
Realistically, I don't think a lot of us before the year would've thought we were going to have the level of success we had. The kids had a lot of fire. It was fun to watch them play unselfishly, have fun doing it and have a good, positive result. |
Sometimes you win ugly, and I was proud of the way the girls battled back. |
The kids are getting excited; they know it's a big game. If we win, we'll be up two games with three games left, so it would put us in the driver's seat. We've had good practices, and I think we're ready to go. |
The second half we just really opened it up and really relaxed a little bit. I think we may have been a little uptight and we really got after it in the second half. |
We are really young and so this is good experience; we just wanted to get through it. Barnes really struggled shooting tonight but then she went off in the second half. We know she has that in her and it was nice to get her back in her groove. |
We knew those three were probably going to help us, but we're all a little surprised with how well they've made the transition to varsity basketball as freshmen. They've worked hard every day and have a great competitive desire. They've stepped up. |