Jan. 15, 2014
Recap | Box Score | Notes
Wisconsin vs. Indiana
Jan. 15, 2014
Kohl Center – Madison, Wis
Wisconsin Head Coach Bobbie Kelsey
Opening Statement:
“We’re happy to get this win. Obviously it was a hard fought game for us. We really need it after dropping two Big Ten games. It’s not going to get any easier from here on out, but if we can keep it close, we can give ourself a chance and we kept it close. Jacki (Gulczynski) had a huge rebound. Michala (Johnson) had a huge and-one at the end. Morgan hit free throws. Nicole (Bauman) hit some free throws. It was a total team effort. Malayna (Johnson) came in and did a great job when her big sis (Michala) got into some foul trouble. Malayna’s tall, we just have to get her more aggressive. We have to play her some more, but she did a nice job for us.”
On Jacki Gulczynski’s play:
“The line speaks for itself. I’ll let her talk about what she was thinking out there. She played a monster game tonight. “One thing about Jacki though is she did work extra on her shot and catching her rhythm and shooting. And that’s what she did tonight, so credit her. That’s what people don’t see and that’s why she had this game tonight. The last game it was more of a matchup situation then her not playing. But we always have confidence in Jacki. We were waiting on this game and hopefully she’ll keep it going because she is a talented player and there’s no reason for her not to be confident. When you work extra and keep sharpening your game, you will never lose that confidence because you know you put in the work. I think she probally recognized that. Now she’s staying after practice late and getting those extra shots up and it made the difference.”
On making the long inbounds play to Michala Johnson with 10 seconds left in the game:
“The play is not to make that pass, but they keep going there. It’s really not a play. But when they came up like that, why not go long. There’s nobody back there and we just worked on that play yesterday. When I think it’s going to be a close game, we work on situations where now… and we ran that play in the final four. Michala (Johnson) got that same layup she got. So it’s not like I’m reinventing the wheel, I’m trying to put us in situations where if we need the three, if we need a two, sideline, kids have confidence when they prepare. “You just can’t make some stuff out of the air. You have to have gone through it, at least see it once so they’ll know what to do. We try to do that for them to help them because we want them to feel good about their effort. Even if we would have lost the game, the effort was there. The execution was there for the most part. We have to clean up some stuff, but I thought that 4-1, we hardly never do that, but it worked for us. So maybe we have to spread people out and make them come out and guard us.”
On Michala Johnson getting into foul trouble:
“It puts a lot of stress on the other kids when I can’t put (Michala Johnson) back in the game. You can get her out if she’s struggling, but it can’t be for fouls.” On Morgan Paige and Taylor Wurtz shooting for a combined 4-of-24 and how that speaks well for the team’s depth:
“Well, they always have to be covered, you can’t just leave them. Taylor’s been struggling. She’s not 100 percent to be perfectly honest with you. She would never say that, but she’s not the Taylor of two years ago. She really isn’t. I feel bad for her because she really wants to help our team and she is just being out there. “Morgan has to slow down. She’s just trying to do too much. Her having five turnovers, we can’t have that. She knows that, because we want to keep those turnovers low. She watches video. She just gets caught up in the moment sometimes. I’m like, ‘Relax, you don’t have to do everything on the first pass, relax.’ But we’ll get it. We’ll get it. It’s a work in progress.”
On having 11 turnovers in the first half and only one turnover in the second half:
“I didn’t know that. That’s nice to know we can play that hard and they can get up on us and we still don’t turn it over. We can take care of the ball. Just sometimes people try to make that pass that’s just not there. It’s just not there so the judgement has to be better. The decision making has to be much improved, but we know some tougher teams out there are going to make us pay when we make these little crazy passes. We watch them and we just have to continue to learn from it.”
