Nov. 4, 2010
Recap | Box Score
Winona State vs. Wisconsin
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Kohl Center | Madison, Wis.
Wisconsin Head Coach Lisa Stone Quotes
On losing senior guard Alyssa Karel in the first half to an injury: “It’s awfully scary. I walked into the hallway at halftime and (strength coach) Ray Eady said, ‘It’s like a preseason NFL game.’ You just hope and pray that nothing happens. Alyssa’s gonna be okay, she will not play on Sunday, she has an injury to her knee; that’s all I can say. Optimism is very good. I wanted to make sure her parents knew that when I came out of the locker room, but that scares you. She’s an awful special kid, and I’m glad to know that she’s gonna be okay.”
On the performances of freshman Morgan Paige and sophomore Taylor Wurtz: “Taylor did a great job. She had to log a lot of minutes and pick up that spot, but the way Morgan Paige played … When you’re a freshman you’re coming in and she’s so fundamental with her shot take drive, knocked down some big shots, defensively when we asked. But we need to improve our ball-screen defense. We were getting hit by everything; it was like we were pinball machines out there.”
On the play of Winona State: “Credit Winona State, that’s a nice team, they got really good shooters, Katie Wulff and (Marieanna) Dulas, they’re really good shooters, and their post players send really good screens for them and they’re a really good team. They turned us over 13 times, five of them came late, but overall I’m very pleased with this game. Because you need this game to find out where you are and what you need to work on. “
On the play of the freshmen: “Our freshmen got to get their feet wet. Jada (Buggs) came in and did a few nice things, but really Morgan Paige as a freshman really pleased us a lot. We may have to run her at point (guard) until Tiera and Alyssa get back healthy and I’m not afraid to do that, she did a really nice job out there.”
On the team’s improved defense in the second half: “We held them to just under 26 percent from the floor in the second half and that’s what we’re all about. We’re a defensive team. We don’t look at the score; we try to look at what our team does. We gave up second-chance opportunities, five offensive rebounds in the first half and I thought we did a better job defensively (in the second half), held them to one and done.”
On the team’s improvement in the second half and what they need to work on: “The second half, there was some justice at halftime. Our team really rallied behind Alyssa, who wasn’t going to play in the second half and that says a lot about our team. We have a lot of different weapons to go to. It was a good game for us. A lot of really good things happened, and (we have) a lot of things to work on. I love this team and I think there are some really good things to improve on and get better at.”
Winona State Head Coach Scott Ballard
Post-game quotes
On exhibition season thus far:"We're looking to get as many different kinds of experiences with different styles of play that we can in this exhibition season. Saturday we played Green Bay (and they have) tremendous ball pressure, speed team, and tonight we play more of a half court oriented team with a lot of size in the interior. Both teams are really good at what they do and they present different challenges for us."
On obstacles against Wisconsin: "Tonight we had a size mismatch inside; they had a lot of depth there. I was pleased with some things that we did, in terms of transition at times. First half I thought we did a lot better job at defending in terms of interior, and rebounded better."
"In the second half they wore us down; some of our young players didn't step up like we needed them to. It's a great experience for them, it may not have felt good but it will be a great learning experience."
On challenges against Green Bay and Wisconsin: "We have some teams in our conference that have bits and pieces and parts like Green bay has and like the Badgers have, but they don't have all of the parts that each team has. We will face some people like we have seen tonight, maybe not as many on the same team, but we will also face some good guards who can break down the dribble."
On second half play: "We did a good job containing dribble penetration; we were really close to being able to draw half a dozen charges, although we only got there for two of them. "
On what the team can get out of tonight's loss: "We can take away some parts of the game that we did well against a quality team; we just need to do a better job at being consistent with execution. When you play a team like we did tonight, that has more talent and size, it's all about execution."
"Even though we did hit some shots we had in the second half, I was pleased to see that we got some good looks."
On similarities between Green Bay and Wisconsin: "I don't think they are similar in any way. Green Bay switches on everything and their post people are our size, its speed vs. size. The only similarity would be Alyssa Karel can do a lot of good things off the bounce, a great pull-up shooter."
"The size was a big challenge for us tonight vs. the speed was a big challenge for our guards vs. Green Bay. Tonight we didn't have turnovers where they got layups; we had execution errors, illegal screens, taking the ball away from us. Two completely different style of plays but they're both very good at what they do."
