Jan. 18, 2018
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Penn State Women's Basketball
Vs. No. 25/21 Rutgers
January 18, 2018
Coquese Washington | Penn State head coach
Q: Coach you guys have had a number of tough close loses this season; is there anything you told your team in the number of timeouts as the fourth quarter wound down?
CW: I think because we've had so many close games that we had a lot of poise in those moments. We weren't really nervous or anything like that. We've practiced a lot some of the things we want to do in those moment both defensively and offensively. It was really neat to be able to see us execute when we needed to. In the past, just getting the ball inbounds was big and with four seconds to go we just wanted to get the ball inbounds to Teniya [Page] and let her use her gifts. She's able to draw fouls and we knew that she'd been having a great game so we wanted to put the ball in her hands, and let her make the play at that point in the game.
Q: What did you think of the play when the ball poked out to Teniya [Page] and it just went right to Amari [Carter] right under the basket?
CW: Well the basketball gods smile on you sometimes, and I'm glad they smiled on us at that moment.
Q: It was kind of different feel here tonight at the BJC, the crowd was really behind you guys. What did that mean to you definitely going down the stretch of the team to get you over the hump?
CW: Well, we love playing here. We love playing in front of our crowd and in front of our fans. They definitely give us a lot of energy and adrenaline. In moments like this they were into the game and they were helping us get calls because of the noise. It's a great place to play here, especially the way our fans support us.
Q: What does this win do for the team? Your ahead double-digits, and they kind of come back and its bit of back-and-forth at the end then you come out with the win. What kind of confidence does that give you moving forward?
CW: Well, I think the thing that we talk about every day is Big Ten play is competitive. No lead is safe. When we went to Rutgers and we played them we were down by 15 with six minutes to go in the game and we came back. We just know that in basketball the game is really long and you just have to keep playing and you have to understand that teams are going to go on runs, the balls going to bounce the wrong way, you're going to get a foul and you're going to go to free throw line. As long as time is left on the clock, we just have to keep competing. That's what we did tonight. We just competed until the clock hit zero and we were able to come away with a win.
Q: Did you think that last Rutgers shot was going to go in?
CW: I was just not happy that she got it off. Actually, Teniya [Page] tried to miss the last free-throw but that's the kind of night she's having. I was like miss it and she was like I tried to miss it.
Teniya Page | G | Junior
Q: Teniya, kind of a wild sequence there are the end. You had just under four seconds left, you take the three and get fouled, and there's a technical on the other coach. What's going through your mind during the whole process?
TP: I told myself at the beginning, I just need to make one free throw but when they told me I had five I wasn't really worried.
Jaida Travascio-Green | G | Sophomore
Q: Jaida, also a wild sequence there where you hit that three to put you guys up seven. Did that just come to you, and you let it go or were you trying to position yourself in case you guys got a rebound?
JT: A little bit of both to be honest. They always tell me to call for the ball when I'm open, and so I just called for it when I was open. Siyeh [Frazier] said to me in the locker room `you're pretty much the only person that thinks it's not going to go in' which gave me confidence at halftime. I don't think I realized exactly what the score was I just knew that we needed to make shots.