Storm Postgame Quotes - June 3, 2003

On Sue Bird:
“She’s definitely not 100 percent. She’s very confident and knows she can’t do more damage to her knee. It’s not going to be hurt worse she just has to deal with the pain, which she does a nice job of.

“We tried to sub her more in the second half and give her a chance to regroup. One for nine is not her typical offensive night. She struggled a little bit and was frustrated with that but we kept reminding her what she was doing besides that. Just her presence on the floor makes a huge difference for us.”

On the Storm’s frontcourt:
“All of our post players did a great job, Alisa Burras coming off the bench and Lauren and Kamila starting out. We have a great post game. We have a lot of post players that can be on the floor to give us different looks and defensively can hold their own. It was nice to see us perform that way. Everyone of them did a nice job.”

On Lauren Jackson:
“Breakout game for Lauren. She’s been shooting the ball very well the last couple of days in practice so we knew it was coming.” On defending the Monarchs: “We didn’t let them get their momentum which starts with transition and on the backboards. They didn’t get either one of those things easily. They really never got their game going. We did a good job of controlling the backboard.”

On the team’s improvement: “When we’re all on in sync on the same night, watch out. Sue showed her leadership in her presence on the floor. If we get everyone going offensively all at the same time, we’re going to be one of the best teams in the league.”

LAUREN JACKSON:

“I need to try to be a little more consistent offensively but fortunately I hit two big threes at the end of the game. Everyone really stepped up.”

On getting the first win:
“We’re all really happy that we just got our first win. We’ve gotten over that bridge now which was great. After we lost our first game, and then our second game and then our third game we just thought we just need to win one game to get over that hump so hopefully that’s it. A huge relief that we won that game.”

On her career-high-tying 13 rebounds:
“My focus was to rebound well tonight, so I went out and focused on rebounding and everything just came from that. Everyone really chipped in and had a great game. We trust each other and play well together and it certainly happened tonight.”

MONARCHS COACH MAURA McHUGH:
“We just weren’t clicking tonight. We were having trouble scoring and they outhustled us on the boards. End of story.”

“Obviously tonight was one of those nights. We didn’t play well. I give Seattle a lot of credit. They were the aggressors tonight and they played well. Period.”

“It’s early (in the season) for them, it’s early for us. Sometimes you need a game like this to wake your team up, to say, ‘Hey, look, there are things we need to work on.’ We weren’t executing, we weren’t doing some of the things we know we can do as a team. Sometimes it takes a good whippin’ to get your attention. Seattle played well and did what they needed to do to win.”

MONARCHS FORWARD YOLANDA GRIFFITH:
“We didn’t box out like we are capable of doing. You know, things went their way tonight. We’re going to bounce back and get ready for the next game. We’re not going to hold our heads down because winning on the road is tough. We’ll be OK, we’ll be OK.”

On being held to 13 points:
“I was getting hit (on my shot), but I just need to go up stronger. That’s the bottom line. I can’t count on the refs to call anything.”

“Mentally we just have to bounce back from this game and get ready for LA.”

MONARCHS GUARD RUTHIE BOLTON:
“We weren’t the aggressors tonight and they outhustled us. We said we wanted the game, but we didn’t fight to the end. (Seattle) just fought harder than we did. The best team doesn’t always win and I think we do have a better team, but if you don’t get out there and play hard for 40 minutes then you’re going to come up short a lot of the time. We realize that and we know we have to look at the big picture.”

“We’ll learn from this. We can’t get too high on a win and too low on a loss. I know we’ll pick it up. We have a lot of veterans on this team and we just got outplayed tonight. I give Seattle credit. They played real well.”