TCU Postgame Quotes vs. Stephen F. Austin
12/9/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
TCU Coach Raegan Pebley
On the game:
"I'm really happy with our first half offense and defense. I felt like we were patient offensively, we worked for the best shot not just a shot. Defensively, there was a good focus off the ball as well as on. We were definitely more focused on the rebounding as well. The second half we just didn't put two halves together. We're still striving to find our best consistently every single possession regardless of the scoreboard. Stephen F. Austin has a lot of great shooters on the floor, and I was really happy with our first half three-point defense as well."
On the energy from defense to offense:
"The first half we were able to create a pace to the game. What we're really focused on is not just pace but valuing possessions and working for a great shot so that we score, not that we just take shots. Our poise and the willingness to value possessions and recognize floor spacing was important against the type of defense they were playing. That really allowed us to be efficient."
On TCU freshman center Jordan Moore:
"Growth is not going to be a straight line up for anybody, none the less a freshman in the Big 12. She's done a great job trying to keep her confidence up. She's learning a pace of play that just happens in Division One basketball that also happens within our system. She's learning how to be efficient and we're learning to adapt to her at times. She's going to be a player that continues to get better in small chunks. She's got some great leaders around her that I know are working really hard to try to keep her really positive and confident."
On TCU senior center Zahna Medley:
"What's pretty cool about Zahna is that she's not in the locker room right now stressing out about how she only scored 11. She's really thinking about how her defense was and how her team performed. She's been such a great leader for us; in practices making sure we're competing at a high level, that we're not taking stretches of practice for granted and really bought into more than just scoring."
On the second half:
"It looked like that to me as a coach and probably as a fan sitting out there, that we got complacent. We warned them that Stephen F. Austin has erased deficits in their previous games because they're a team that shoots the three really well and that we can't look past them. Luckily we had built enough of a lead that we were able to sustain. They won that third quarter. They scored seven of nine possessions to end that quarter. They scored more points in the third quarter than they did the entire first quarter, so I was not happy at the end of that quarter. I felt like we played a bit better in the fourth quarter, but we had so much to gain back from just a mindset we lost in that third quarter."
On play calls:
"With our offense there's never really just one sole focus or this play is about this one end result. It's always an option for us. We have to play basketball with concepts and not just plays.
On TCU freshman center Jordan Moore:
"To open the game, Jordan got to benefit from great screens, great ball movement, and really great passes where she really just had to turn and shoot."
On scoring in the first half:
"We were able to get the ball reversed and were able to show a little patience and not just take a quick shot."
TCU redshirt sophomore guard A.J. Alix
On TCU's defense:
"She always tells us that our defense feeds offense, so we have to focus on our defense before we score. We know we can score as a team, so we have to execute the game plan and just play defense at all times."
On their energy and the game:
"It starts off with how we warm up and our energy then. We can score, we can score off the bounce, we have a lot of shooters, but we want to play more defense and have more fast breaks. We want to get into our early offense."
TCU senior forward Caitlin Diaz
On rebounding:
"Coach has always told me I need to go in and get rebounds, so that's one of my focuses. She tells us to do our job and my job is to always go rebound, so that's what I try to do every game and that's what I tried to do today."
On TCU freshman center Jordan Moore:
"Jordan has come a long way. She's a freshman, but she plays really, really well. We always try to get her the ball. Today she just made buckets. When someone starts making buckets we try to get it to her, and she was producing so we just kept getting the ball to her."
On TCU's offense:
"Defense feeds our offense. If we play defense and just run through our offense, we try to find shots in there and not force anything."
On the second half:
"We never try to make the energy go down, or make the defense go down. We just probably weren't as focused. We had this huge lead, but we need to always stay focused. That's what we're learning because we're playing other teams and Big 12 teams that are going to score. This is a learning process so we're learning to keep the energy and keep our defense up. That's what we just took away from that third quarter."
