Dec. 28, 2008

Recap | Box Score | Notes

Oakland Head Coach Beckie Francis

Opening Statement
"I'd just like to say that I thought Angel Robinson was very good. When you play a team that has a player that scores 12-15 from the floor and knocks down 33 points when we have our best defenders on her is very frustrating. I just want to give Marquette a lot of credit for, one, recruiting her and getting her the ball. I felt like we threw different defenders on her and she would hit some big shots. We hurt ourselves by having unnecessary turnovers that at key moments, and we addressed that in the locker room and we're going to correct that. But I thought our team played really hard. I thought it was an exciting game and we never quit."

On Angel Robinson
"I'm going to admit that she surprised us. We were really focusing on Krystal Ellis. We played them a few years ago and she was the main focus. Robinson is a sophomore, so we did not face her then. We did have our best defenders on both of them. That's why we went with Sharise Calhoun in the second half. She's an amazing defender as a freshman, but she's not used to playing her, either. And April Kidd can't play 40 straight minutes with at the intensity April plays at. It was really tough. I thought our post players did a great job of stopping 12 (Jessica Pachko) and 41 (Paige Fiedorowicz). They were Big East forwards and were not a factor at all. So, I really want to compliment Melissa Jeltema, Brittany Carnago and Anna Patritto on stopping them. We just couldn't stop that guard."

On whether a guard has ever shot that well against OU
"Believe it or not, at Niagara for our first road game, Jennifer McNamee lit it up. It was really frustrating. We've actually been working on defending those kind of shots, but she just kept making them. When players are hot and start feeling it, it's hard."

On what kind of strategies were deployed
"I don't want to sell anybody out, but we asked our players to make an adjustment and I told them in the locker room that we're going to take the blame, because we really hadn't worked on it enough. We wanted to take Robinson out of her rhythm and to just hit her. Don't get a foul doing it, but just throw her off. Our players couldn't make the adjustment and they refused to foul, which I like that, but we're going to have to practice it."

On playing Marquette in preparation for ranked SDSU
"I told the team this is a perfect game to play heading into league play, especially with South Dakota State coming up Saturday and North Dakota State on Monday. We couldn't ask for a better game, because it's going to test us and expose our weaknesses. We're going to keep our heads up, because we're having a great year and we're going to get working in practice and correct things we did, like making sure to take care of the ball."

Senior guard Jessica Pike

On guarding Angel Robinson
"She's just a very versatile player. She can shoot the three from very deep, so you have to contest that, and she can also take it to the hole and pull up. She's an all-around player and she played really well tonight. She shot 4-7 for three-pointers and 12-15 overall, so there's not one thing you can take away from her. She can do just about everything."

On how OU executed on both ends of the floor
"Offensively, I think we had some lapses. We had way too many turnovers for a game like this. When you play a Big East team, you really have to play a lot sharper than you do against a Summit League team. We didn't do that do that tonight. Defensively, I thought we did well up until it came to rebounding. I think we had some lapses and that really hurt us also."

On keeping up the intensity
"It is definitely hard. It's like a little dagger every time they make a basket. But I think we did good and just kept on pushing through as hard as we could because I knew that we just had to get those stops, but they came down and hit their shots if they needed to, so in the end, they pulled out and did what they needed to do."

On what playing big opponents does for league play "It's going to help us a lot, going against teams like that. We probably won't face any guard that good (Robinson) and just having that experience and knowing that we have to work on now, because playing teams like this exposes our weaknesses for us. We can come down and work on those things and if we can shut down a player half as good as her, than we'll be fine."

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