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Bowling Green State University Athletics
BGSU-Oakland Quotes
January 04, 2003 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 3, 2003
ROCHESTER, Mich. -
BGSU HEAD COACH CURT MILLER:
(On the narrow win:)
"We'll take it. I don't know if I've taken a deep breath after that last 3:45, where we found every way not to score, and made it an interesting game. We outplayed them for 36-plus minutes, but we played so tentatively and so poorly in the last three minutes. You're just so happy to get away with a win. That was ugly, but we'll take the win, and we're happy to be 7-4."
"We didn't shoot foul shots well, and Kim (Griech) missed those two front ends in the final minute. But, I'd still try to get her the ball (in a similar situation). She's 100 percent on the year coming into this game. We actually diagrammed the last two plays off of out-of-bounds plays for Francine Miller, because she was having a big night. We panicked a little bit, and Kim was the secondary option. But, that's a nice secondary option to have when you have a kid who is 23-of-23 (from the free-throw line)."
"We didn't execute down the stretch, but we got a win, and that's an NCAA Tournament team from last year, and a very, very talented team. We deserved the win, because we outplayed them for much of the game; I just wish we would have finished a little stronger, but there's a lot of excitement in our lockerroom right now. We have a chance to finish with the best non-conference record in the MAC West. If Toledo can't upset Cincinnati (Saturday, Jan. 4), we'll be tied with UT for the best record in the division. It's been a while since Bowling Green could claim that, so we're excited."
"Francine was very aggressive tonight. If we can get her off to a good start, you can always see a spark in her. You could see that she wanted the ball tonight, and I did a better job of getting her the ball. We have had some nights where we weren't able to get Francine the ball as much as I would like. When you have a player that talented, you've just got to get her the ball. I'm happy that we got her 21 shots, and I think she may have even passed up five or six. She went at Katie Wolfe, their best player, and got her into foul trouble. That helped limit Katie's minutes a little bit, and made her a little tentative. We've got to get Francine a lot of shot attempts like we did tonight."
"We got good production from a lot of people. Again tonight, I was pleased with our bench, and with our freshmen. I didn't give Marisa Smith as many minutes as she probably deserves, coming off the two shooting games that she's had, but she's a gamer and she'll hang in there for us. This was a big win."
"You're never going to totally stop Katie Wolfe; you just hope to try to contain her. She's in the top-15 in the nation in scoring, and she's going to get her points. They have a one-two-three punch with Wolfe, (Jayme) Wilson and (Romica) Clint. Going into the game, we had a goal of keeping those three under 40 points combined. They got 49, which is obviously a little bit higher than we wanted. The adage we had going into the game, and you might laugh at this, is 'the strength of the wolf is the pack.' Well, the strength of Katie Wolfe is Katie Wolfe. We felt like, if we could shut down the pack, that one 'Wolfe' couldn't beat us. We certainly tried to shut down the pack, meaning their bench players and role players, and we did a great job of that."
"Oakland is as good a shooting team as we'll play. They shot an incredible percentage in the second half, and we'll go back, break down some film and explain to our kids why we weren't as successful at shutting them down in the second half. They're a great team, but I think we did some things to counter their shooting percentage. We only turned the ball over 11 times, we rebounded with them, and we were able to get to the foul line. Francine, in particular, got to the line over and over, and that was huge for us."
"I also want to mention Tene Lewis, who is giving us some very good minutes. She has been playing great defense, and deserves minutes on the floor. Tonight, she steps up with the stop of the game in the last few seconds, and gets the big steal for the win. Tene Lewis really continues to have an effect on the game at the defensive end."
"We're excited about our good start, and now we turn our attention to a big conference opener against Ohio Wednesday. It is really a huge game for us, and I look forward to seeing the fans out there."
