Jan. 24, 2009
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Oakland University Head Coach Beckie Francis
Opening Statement
"(Jessica) Pike was awesome tonight. Just from start to finish, offense and defense, I thought our team did a nice job of getting her the ball. We had a strategy of getting her the ball and offensively and defensively, I thought she did a nice job on their guards. But our whole team played very good team defense. They were a big team and we worked on trying to stop their inside game and I thought we did."
On seven stretch when WIU did not score
"We go through a lot of drills in practice where we work on getting stop after stop, so I'm not surprised when we can go on a flurry and hold teams. We did have some breakdowns that we are going to work on, because I thought Amanda Walker got some easy looks sometimes and we're going to break the film down and get even and tougher. That's what this team can do. They love defense, actually, and love putting those flurries together."
On April Kidd's injury
"She's fine. We were holding her back to protect her for Monday, but she'll practicing tomorrow and playing Monday."
On Hanna Reising getting back into the groove after injury and illness
"It's just going to take some time. I thought at the end of the game, she was really smart, hitting that big basket. She had some big defensive steals, so I think everyone knows by now that I don't evaluate shooting and what you do on offense. If you play defense, you play for me and she does. That's why she continues to get her minutes and get some big stops defensively."
On winning seven games in a row
"I think the players are keeping track of that for fun, but I really don't want to know. I don't look at the standings and, I know I keep repeating this, just take it one game at a time. When it comes to March, tell me what my seed is and we'll just play that team. We want to win three in a row once we get to South Dakota. We're playing well and the Lord has blessed us with health and we're going to continue praying for health all the way through."
On Oakland having silent confidence
"We're experienced and I feel we have an experienced team. We Pike and April, then MJ and Hanna as upperclassmen. I think they've been through this season and been through this conference. They want to win and right now, we're not really doing anything except riding the coattails of our leadership. They're just always focused and we've been practicing great. We say the hay's in the barn and we roll the ball out on the night of the game and it just takes care of itself. We keep focusing on practicing well."
On if she ever had a team as focused as this one
"I guess the difference with this team, and I hope I'm not offending previous teams, is that we a really, sincerely deep. I have faith and trust in every single person and that's why we play everybody and we've been trying to do it every single game. It keeps them excited about practice and every player knows they are going to get in and contribute and that they're either going to make a play or hurt us. They're all competitive and they all work hard, so I would say, we're deep and everyone cares and understands their role. That's why we are different. Everybody works hard."
Senior guard Jessica Pike
On whether Oakland was concerned when WIU started to come back into the game
"We definitely have a lot of confidence in our defense. We know that we can get stops when need be. They are a very good shooting team and they can hit their threes. So we knew they were going to make a run at us. We just had to keep our heads in and play defense as best we could."
On getting quality baskets from 18 assists off of 22 points
"It shows the unselfishness of our team and no one really cares who is shooting it, we're just going to give the open person the ball and their going to take the shot."
On whether OU getting more comfortable affected Oakland's game
"Definitely, it opens up things for everyone else. MJ (Melissa Jeltema) had a great second half and I think everyone else stepped up and were focused on opening the rest of the court up. They did a great job."
Western Illinois University Head Coach LESLIE CRANE
Opening Statement
"We thought our kids really fought back hard. It was just too little, too late, but we did a nice job fighting back."
On her team's resiliency, rallying from being down 20 to pulling to within six
"(Our kids) have a lot of fight in them, and always have. Unfortunately we got ourselves into this position up at North Dakota State as well, too. It was just too big a hole to get out of. We've got a never-say-die mentality, and that's good. We just continue, at times, to dig our selves a hole in that situation, and a lot of that has to do with our turnovers, so we've got to do a lot better job of taking care of the ball."
On what Oakland does defensively that frustrates opposing teams
"We've had problems scoring at different times, but they were not allowing the ball to reverse, and we started looking for the skip passes across. Once we did that it opened things up quite a bit. It was difficult for us to get the ball across."
On her team's turnovers early in the game causing her team to expend a great deal of energy coming back "Absolutely, like I said before, that was the whole reason for us having to come back."
On the defensive adjustments she made from the first half to the second half, holding Jessica Pike to three second-half points after scoring 18 in the opening half
"I subbed. The young lady that I had given that job to didn't do a real stand-up job, so I made a substitution, and we went to a different defense. We changed defenses, and I think that made a difference. Ashley Hoch did a better job in the second half than I think my starting guard did."
On how she rates this year's team against her past teams.
"They're a very young team. Throughout the whole year, this has been a fractured year for us. We've had difficulties with clearinghouse issues with our foreign kids. We'll go nine games, and somebody becomes eligible; then six games, someone becomes eligible, and then nine games, sixteen games, somebody else becomes eligible. Last weekend was the first time that we played with the team that I recruited. We are still trying to figure some things out. In a sense, this is really only our third game with the team that was recruited. It's been a very difficult and trying year; not only with that situation but with the fact that we played a tremendous schedule during our first semester. It's been a lot of counseling, a lot of cheerleading, a lot of working and trying to get better and waiting for these other kids to become eligible. It's been difficult - it's not like any other year that I've had, because when I've started the year, I had all my kids. I think that's probably the biggest difference right there. We haven't had all of our players so it's been a difficult road, obviously. We're still trying to figure things out with one another, and I always said we were going to be better late than we were early, and I think that's probably going to be the case."
