Jan. 23, 2018
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Penn State Women's Basketball
vs. Illinois
January 23, 2018
Coquese Washington | Penn State head coach
Q: You guys had a rocky start to Big Ten play, but you've now won three-straight games, what does this do for the confidence of your team?
CW: I think when you win games, you certainly have confidence. But we try not to think about all that stuff together, we try to just think about one game at a time and the game that's in front of us. We've played a lot of basketball and we're only halfway through conference play. There's a lot of basketball left, there's a lot of room for growth for us, and a lot of room for more consistency from us.
Q: What would you say was the most important thing you did today, and did well?
CW: I think that there were some good stretches during the game where we were disruptive defensively. When you struggle to make shots like we did early in the game, then you have to pick it up on the defensive end, we tried to be disruptive, we got a few turnovers in the press, we got a couple offensive rebounds and got to the free throw line. Being disruptive defensively helped us get our foot in and get going.
Q: What was the message to the team in that first timeout?
CW: I wanted us to take our intensity up a bit more, so we called the early timeout and talked about being more intense and aggressive on the defensive end, then we got some transition baskets and that helped loosen things up for us.
Q: You mentioned you're struggling a lot to take shots. How do you keep getting them to take those shots when they're just not going in?
CW: Well, we have very confident shooters. They're not going to stop shooting when they miss a couple shots. But, I think one of the things that we wanted to do was get some easier shots. Earlier in the game, we were hunting 3-point shots and we talked about getting into the paint off the dribble, getting into the paint off the pass, making the defense work a bit more and I think once we did that, we got some better shots in and we knocked a few down.
Q: You went the last 5:17 without hitting a field goal, but you were really good from the free throw line, can you talk about free throw shooting was for you today?
CW: It was critical. We did go a stretch and I thought during that stretch, we had some good looks that I thought didn't go down. Teniya [Page] had some good ones, Amari [Carter] had some good ones, Jaida [Travascio-Green] had some good ones that just didn't go down; but we got to the free throw line and so we were able to continue to get points on the board, and that's what we need to happen, we need to get points on the board in whatever way we can.
Q: How big was it to limit their second chance opportunities?
CW: [Alex] Wittinger is a fantastic offensive rebounder, one of the best in our conference if not the best, we wanted to make sure we tried to limit her opportunities, and that led them to get confidence and momentum in that space. I thought we did a good job, in the first half in particular, as a team they only had four offensive rebounds in the first half, so that was big for us.
Teniya Page | G | Junior
Q: You struggled from the field today. What helped you stay so consistent at the free throw line when you were struggling from everywhere else on the court?
TP: I think being patient because some of the shots I rushed and for some of the other shots they just did not go in, so I cannot really get mad about it. I just have to keep playing the game.
Q: What were you working on today, specifically on defense, to try to get your numbers up and get those steals?
TP: I think we wanted to be aggressive on the defensive end, which is something we have done all year; us forcing 16 turnovers is good, but we also have to make those into points, which is something we did not do tonight.
Jaida Travascio-Green | G | Sophomore
Q: It looked like you distributed the ball pretty well tonight because some of your players had double-digit points. What was going right in that regard?
JTG: Recently in practice we have worked on making the extra pass and hitting the wide-open person and I think we were trying to do that a lot today. We even missed some people today so we can only go up from here, but it was nice to move the ball more than usual today.