“We didn’t shoot the ball well and both teams didn’t take care of the ball.  Offensively, we were pretty poor.  I didn’t like our execution on offense.  Defensively there were times that we created plays to play out of and didn’t make them (Chicago) pay for that (25 turnovers).”

“(Chasity) Melvin and (Candice) Dupree were key.  They made it difficult for us the whole game.  They are an athletic team.”

(On Ruth Riley playing limited minutes the last couple of games)
“That’s been a factor for two games now.  We tried to play her, but she hadn’t practiced until today.  She wanted to play and I appreciate the effort.  She’s a big help to us and that’s shown up these last couple of games.”

Guard Becky Hammon

“We didn’t play well enough to win.  We have a week to practice and that’s time we need to get better and work on things.  We didn’t play like our team is capable of playing.  When a team comes in and plays your style and beats you on your turf, that’s frustrating.  We need the time to work on things and focus on getting better.”

“We gave up a lot of offensive boards and had too many turnovers.  We just didn’t play well.  They went to the free throw line 25 times and we went 13.  We got beat on the boards.  We didn’t knock down shots that we normally make.”

Forward Sophia Young

(On having a week off…)
“We just need to regroup and see what we need to do as a team.  We need to come together and have everybody do their part.  We need to evaluate ourselves and get to the point we need to be at.  We didn’t expect to be 4-4 at this point and the games we lost, we could have won.  We just have to pull things together as a team and do what we need to do.”

Mercury Head Coach Paul Westhead

“You always want to get out to a good start especially when you’re on the road. You know, you don’t want to get yourself fighting an up hill battle and we had that problem in our last game. We’re down 17 in the second half in Sacramento at home. So we kind of talked briefly about it.

(On getting to fast to early)
“No, we don’t mind at all. We just don’t let tem get on a scoring run and come up short.

(When the Sliver Stars went 3-19, if they missed a good opportunity)
“I thought we did some good things. They got a whole bunch of offence rebounds, but our coaches were saying that the ball was being tapped out 8 to 10 feet to the foul line. It’s pretty hard for me to knock my defenders, when that happens. We could of exploded out in that quarter but we didn’t.”

Sky Forward Candice Dupree

(on overcoming turnovers)

“We simply didn’t take care of the ball. San Antonio took advantage of our mishandling the ball and scored almost half of their first half points off of our turnovers. Luckily we were able to outscore them and got a few good rebounds.”

(on not quitting)

“We just kept trying. San Antonio guards put a lot of pressure on us and just too much on it but we just kept trying and overcame their defense.”

(on Becky Hammon)

“We did a good job of making her give up the ball but she can always make it go in. I don’t know how she can get it to go in there but it just seems to get in there every time.”

(on Jia Perkins)

“She played excellent and had a couple of big threes. She played great defense and was able to stop San Antonio from making those big runs and kept them from catching up with us”