Opening statement … 

“Glad to get the victory today and thought LSU played real hard and gave great effort. I loved some of the things that we did to build a big lead, but we just showed a lot of immaturity there by letting the fourth quarter get away from us, but happy to win. We will be going into the bye week now and try to get some rest and see if we can come back with a little pep in our step as we get ready for a big game against Vanderbilt next Sunday. But happy to win.”

 

On what happened in the fourth quarter …

“Poor effort and I think that shots stopped falling for us and we started turning over. And, as this team has done often this year, if our offense is not working then we don’t play as hard on defense, and that is disappointing. We also cannot seem to stand success when we get a big lead. It just seems that we don’t value defense possessions the way we need to. But, they just started doing whatever they wanted to, they were in the fourth quarter, and luckily we scored enough to win. It was not our finest moment and we will try to get better from it.”

 

On the performance in the first half and third quarter …

“Yesterday afternoon I thought we really started seeing a few things against this match-up zone and started getting the ball in good areas. You know, the ball moved great sometimes today and sometimes we still are not able to see it. We will just keep working at it and I think we will definitely see some zone next Sunday at Vanderbilt, so we need to get good at it.”

 

On Janee Thompson playing against South Carolina vs. today …

“She had a great game today, and she really showed some great leadership today and some great fire. Our leadership today from her standpoint was really good. I know that was a tough time for her Thursday night to go in that building after that injury and to come back today and she shot the ball great. Her shots are looking really good and we just have to make sure we take good ones and we will be in good shape.” 

 

On fatigue of the team …

“Well you can make any excuse you want to. We really work hard to shorten practice. We have given an extra day off here and there, so we are in the same boat as anyone else is. LSU actually has fewer players available than we do and they played their tails off in the fourth quarter. So I am just going to look at film and deal with facts and see. I know the fourth quarter was not good so I will figure out why it wasn’t and what was going on and try to correct it.”

 

 

On fourth quarter struggles …

“I’m not exactly sure. I don’t want to blame it on the focus or energy because, you know, as a player and teammate out there, I don’t think that’s what we felt it was. We were trying and we were talking to each other and we were trying to have energy. So I’m not sure exactly what it was. We had some breakdowns on the defensive end, and they got some points off of our turnovers.”

 

On her performance …

“Um, I don’t know. I think the amount of assists I had I have to give a lot of credit to my teammates. They did a good job of knocking down shots and making lay-ups. They gave me all the confidence in the world today to go out and play hard and play my game, because I only have a few games left. They were really just behind me the entire time. It was a lot of fun but we just gotta keep getting better on the defensive end.”

 

On offensive play…

“I think most of the time we do a good job of executing offensively. I think where we’ve been struggling is on the defensive end. That’s the team that we are. That’s our identity, we are a defensive team, and we gotta figure out a way to get that end of the floor together because it shouldn’t matter what we are doing offensively. A lot of our offense is generated from the defensive end. We get two days to get our feet under us and then we have to come back and work hard in practice and get it together.” 

 

On ending the three-game losing streak…

“I do think that we feel pretty good. I think a part of us just wants to do better. Try to work towards extending leads when we have them and not let down so much. We’ll just go back to work Wednesday.” 

 

On playing tough to the last buzzer…

“That’s one thing that we do. The kids play hard and they guard and they don’t quit. They play to the very end of the buzzer. We wish that we could play that type of style of ball the entire game, but when you’re playing six players it’s kind of hard to bring that. “

 

On getting quality minutes out of Alexis Hyder…

“She was able to play with two fouls and not pick up that third so that was critical for us. There were quite a few players that were in foul trouble but our team got on the offensive glass and outrebounded Kentucky. But Kentucky also shot a great percentage. I thought in the third quarter, ‘They don’t miss a shot.’ They shot the ball really well tonight.”