Pitt vs. No. 13 Georgetown Postgame Quotes
2/10/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 10, 2010
POST-GAME QUOTES
No. 16/13 Georgetown 66, Pitt 63
February 10, 2010 – Petersen Events Center
Quoting Pitt’s Head coach Agnus Berenato
Opening Statement...
“Congratulations to Georgetown. They weathered the storm. I felt that we played well enough to win and we didn’t. I want to compliment my team; they came in and did a really good job. We tried to play great defense and I thought we had a great game plan. Our coaches did really good scouting and came up with a game plan that we were really excited about. I think the game was won in the first nine minutes. We had 10 turnovers in the first nine minutes and you can’t win games when you have a turnover per minute. I thought we settled down and we played and we attacked and it was an even game the rest of the time. We beat them the second half but we had a huge deficit in the beginning. They were 14 points up on us and it ended up being a three point game and I think that we had an opportunity at the end of the game. We called a time out, we set up the play, we knew what we wanted and it didn’t happen. They had people that scored in crunch time at the end of the game and we didn’t have that.”
On the second half defense...
“We switched up what we were doing every timeout. We did a lot of jump defenses and multiple defenses. The three’s Rubylee Wright was hitting in the first half were killing us, but she was wide open; no one was covering her. We knew she could hit those threes. We can’t let those kids hurt us, especially the ones that can. Obviously we were really focused on Sugar Rodgers. Sugar is averaging 20 points and she had two tonight. She is a leading candidate for Big East Rookie of the Year. She is their motivator and leading scoring and I thought we did a great job of taking her out of the ball game. The next person we wanted to take out was Monica McNutt and we didn’t do a good job on her. The three’s she hit in the first half were wide open and we were furious that they had seven three’s in the first half.
On Pink the Pete...
“Pink the Pete is important to me because of what it represents. What it represents is trying to get a cure for breast cancer. But the main thing for us to remember is that we are trying to get a win. We are going into the game with Louisville trying to get a win. We are aware that we have the capabilities to make other people aware of breast cancer. It’s near and dear to my heart because it’s what my mom died of and I took a year off from coaching to take care of her. The statistics are daunting. Out of the 8 women in this room 2 will be directly affected by breast cancer. Even men can have breast cancer. It started three years ago. I was EMC for the race for the cure and someone recognized me and said “you should have pink hat day at the Pete,” and it didn’t occur to me until later to have Pink the Pete. The administration jumped on board quickly and we had a lot of people come and wear pink. I always talk to my team about how what you do in basketball relates to life. You have to fight for a win in basketball and you have to fight through adversity in life. You have to fight like hell to get through breast cancer and some days are good and some are bad and that’s how it is on the basketball court. Right now our team has to fight like hell for a win. As leaders we’ll come back to practice tomorrow and be ready to do that.”
On scoring...
“Remember the main thing of the game is scoring. At half time we looked at our starters and our starting guards had two, three and two points each. Taneisha Harrison was 2-for-9 and Shayla Scott was 2-for-13 and combined they were 4-for- 22. I guess I should be saying I’m glad it was a close game.”
Quoting Pitt’s Pepper Wilson
On what worked for her in the first half...
“I would have to say my size. When we were scouting they have their biggest player listed at 6’2, but really she may be only 5’11. The coaches were telling me ‘you are bigger than them, just get two feet in the paint and you’ll score’. So I think my size was a huge advantage in this game.”
On how Georgetown adjusted to her in the second half...
“I noticed that once I had the ball I had two or three girls on me. I looked for my guards to spot up so I think it’s that they double downed on me in the second half.”