Postgame Quotes/Notes - Storm 75, Houston 67
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TONIGHT'S NOTES | |||
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ANNE DONOVAN:
On
Betty Lennox's play:We relied so much on
Lauren Jackson in the first half, everybody else kind of stood around waiting. When Lauren gets on a roll, we tend to do that. Sue had good looks but couldn't knock them down in the first half, so Betty had to pick and choose. In the second half, we encouraged her to stay aggressive because we knew they would focus on Lauren Jackson, which they did. She stays confident; it's the matter of letter her know she has the green light. Most impressive on her play in the second half was her ability to knock down open shots, get to the free-throw line, and she had some great assists down there to help other people get to the free-throw line. She was definitely the difference for us in the second half.
On Jackson:
Amazing! You guys have watched her play quite a bit and you know she is not a hundred percent and you can see she is uncomfortable out there, but sometimes when you are injured you stay more focused on the game itself. You have to be focused, you can't think about the injury. Hopefully, she won't be too stiff (back) from this game and travel and will be even better in the next game.
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SUE BIRD:
On the start of the game:
On the road, playoffs, you need to come out strong. You see what happens when the crowd gets into it. You see the momentum. The first five minutes are key. For somebody (Jackson) to step up, hit the shots, and make the plays like she did was huge for us because, like I said, everyone else just followed.
On her off shooting night:
That's the game of basketball. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they don't. I know especially with my role on the team I've just got to keep shooting the open ones. Eventually, hopefully they are going to fall. I'll take 4-for-15 any day as long as you give me that last one.
On Jackson:
That's what great players do. Regardless of what the ailment is, whether it be sickness or injury, in a big game they play big and that's what Lauren did today, especially in the first five minutes. She really set a tone for our team and I think we all followed her lead.
I don't think she was comfortable. Back problems are painful and uncomfortable. If you watched her sit down, she's not comfortable. There were times when play would stop and we would kind of see how she was doing, but during the course of play, she played tough. The way she rebounded tonight was a most impressive thing because that's where you are really bodying people and getting hit. For her to be able to do what she did on court is impressive. I never thought she was going to come out of the game. I know it was something that could have really happened, but for some reason I just knew she wasn't. It never really crossed my mind.
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On Lennox:
Betty was unbelievable. That's what we need from her every game. Once she does that, we are unstoppable.
On her play:
I played hard. I went out there to win and to give 100%. It's kind of easy to get off when you are not double-teamed, but as soon as I hit a few points I was double teamed every time I got the ball, so it wasn't as open for me to score. It was OK, I can do better.
On her back:
It's not great. Hopefully, we will win this next game so we can have a break before the next series. We're going to go out there and give 100% no matter what. We really want to win this again. Once you get out there and start playing, that's just the way it is. With my shins and everything else I've been through that is so painful, I've done this before, so it's not really that frightening.
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On her second-half play:
Well, the first half I was focusing on defense. That was my mindframe coming into this game, being very aggressive on defense. I took what the defense gave me in the second half and was able to knock down the shots. Our offense is not set around me. I do what ever I need to do to help Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird. Again, my main focus tonight wasn't offensively, but to be very aggressive defensively.
On defending Sheryl Swoopes:
Our gameplan was to focus on Sheryl Swoopes and for the off guard to help out and we did a great job on that. Our defensive assignment was to shut her down and make her take tough shots, but we all know that she's a great player and you can't really ever shut her down, you can just try to contain her, double her, and throw different defensive looks at her.
On her wrist:
I did not want to focus on my injury. I say right now I am one hundred percent because of the simple fact that it's the playoffs. If I focus too much and put my energy toward that injury, it would take away from my game.
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VAN CHANCELLOR:
On the game:
We have had some frustrating moments with this team and this was another one tonight. We just could not get a shot to drop. I just thought their big three were outstanding ... Lauren, Betty and Sue. I just thought they did a great job. Sue ran their team. When you just shoot the ball like that ... it's just really hard to beat a really good team, and right now, they're just playing as well as you can play. We just didn't do a very good job of defending them.
On Michelle Snow's play:
I thought Michelle had another great game ... 21 (points) and 7 (rebounds), she was pretty dominating. We've got our work cut out for us in Seattle. This format is when you lose the home game first, it's just a bear. But that's not say that it (a turnaround and winning the series) can't be done.
On the Comets shooting:
I thought early we didn't get many good shots and then that dug us a hole.
On Jackson:
If she had a bad back, I don't want to see her healthy. With a bad back, she had 19 points and was just dominating on the boards, just dominating. That was about as dominating as I've seen Lauren play ... on the boards, rebounding, defense and scoring.
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On the game:
I don't think we could get anything going. We couldn't get into the flow of the game. Defensively, we did not execute our gameplan. Now our backs are against the wall. We've got to go there (Seattle) and win two, but we've got to take it one at a time. We've got to take the one on Thursday and, hopefully, another one on Saturday. Personally, I had a horrible game. As a team, I don't think we played up to our abilities.
On the Storm:
I thought they executed well offensively and they got Lauren going early on. When she gets started, it's hard to not only stop her, but slow her down. We just can't focus and concentrate on Lauren in trying to shut her down.
On Game 2 in Seattle:
I know I'll play a lot better than I played tonight. It's very disappointing not just for me, but for our team. I feel like I really came out tonight and let them down. I'll bounce back.
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On the game:
I think we've got to find a way to make something happen when we can't score, we've got to find a way to make stops. We've got to find a way to stop Sue and Lauren in that two-man game ... they gave us a lot of fits and they ended up getting a lot of layups. That's something that we have a few days to correct. If we don't correct it, we're going home, so we know we have to find a way to correct that and we're going to do that.
On the Comets:
You're going to have nights where you don't make shots and you just have to be able to stop the other team. If we find a way to stop the other team, hopefully the shots will fall. We have enough players on this team to make shots, so we really want to focus on the defensive end because when we're playing good on defense, we're hard to stop on offense.
On her role:
We have a lot of players on this team that can make shots and when you have your veterans that are not shooting (well), what you do as a post player (is) you try to draw the double-team and get them open shots. You try to get them cuts to the basket to where they get easy baskets, and once you get easy baskets, usually your game starts to flow from there.
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TINA THOMPSON:
On defending Jackson:
We were playing her straight up. She hit some tough shots early on and towards the end of the game, so we started getting the ball out of her hands. We went to a zone for a few minutes in the game ... that kind of ruffled their feathers a little bit, but I don't think we did our job. We didn't execute the way that we could have and make things happen for us. We had a couple of lulls in the game and you can't do that against a team like this.
On the Comets:
We got shots, but we missed a lot of layups early on. I don't know if it was due to their defense or the fact that we couldn't put them down. We were getting shots that were open ... I don't know how many open shots I got, and in a normal situation I probably would have knocked them down. We have two more opportunities...we just go from there.
Offensively, we were doing the same thing we've been doing, but we did not execute well defensively. On most occasions our defense creates offense for us and not playing well defensively it's hard to get the offense going.
