Bowling Green State University Athletics
BGSU-Cleveland State Quotes
January 03, 2004 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 3, 2004
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -
BGSU FRESHMAN LIZ HONEGGER
(On the defense setting up the offense)
"The coaches always say, if our defense is clicking, it will lead to offense. Also, the intensity on defense makes you play that way on offense."
"We're 7-4 now, and coach just said that the non-conference games are good wins, but we start conference play at 0-0. But, of course, we have some momentum going into the conference season."
BGSU SENIOR STEFANIE WENZEL
"I think our defense has really picked up the last couple games, and it leads to easy points. We had a ton of layups. We missed a lot of layups, too, but it just makes for easier baskets."
(On beating Cleveland State, after CSU beat Youngstown State by 34 points, after YSU had beaten BGSU to open the season)
"We are a completely different team now. We have nine new people that hadn't played for us last year, and we didn't quite know how good we were then. Now, everything seems to be clicking, and we have some momentum and a lot more confidence."
"Last year, a lot of times, we would start slowly in the second half. This year, we've really emphasized coming out strong after halftime, because it can make or break the game."
BGSU COACH CURT MILLER
(On the difference between the BGSU team from the beginning of the season to the present time)
"We're definitely a better team. That Cleveland State team that we just played had three senior starters, one of whom (Ashley Schrock) is from this area and probably brought 100 fans herself. It's a talented team, coming off a 34-point win, and we knew we needed to step up and play. They beat Louisville, coached by my mentor (Tom Collen), who runs the same stuff that we do, so we knew we would have to play well to beat them. That is a big win for us."
"We've taken a big step forward since that Youngstown State game. With the exception of the IUPUI game, I feel like we've played nine pretty good games in non-conference play."
"You can see, every time out, that our freshmen are more confident. They're going to get minutes, and they're going to be allowed to play through mistakes. Our three starting freshmen are tremendous, but all our freshmen are contributing. Carin Horne, for example, just gets better and better every day. You can see her blossoming."
"Lindsay (Austin) and Stefanie are giving us good leadership. They were behind a very strong leader in Francine Miller, and now, they have to step up. It's a learning process, and they've accepted it. Certainly, we go as Lindsay goes, and you can always count on Stefanie to score points; that's 10 straight games in double figures. She didn't play a great game tonight, but you look at the stat sheet and she has 18 points."
"With 14 wins, we have the best non-conference record over the last two years of any team in the MAC. What does that get you? Nothing. I told them they can celebrate being 7-4 for the next few hours. When we wake up tomorrow, we're 0-0. We have to do better in the conference -- it's one of our goals -- but we are proud of the fact that we went out and beat who we scheduled (in non-conference play)."
(On BGSU's 11-0 run midway through the first half)
"I felt like we stayed aggressive. Our offensive rebounding kept us in the game early, when we weren't hitting a lot of shots, and then, we were just more crisp offensively. We made some shots and got going, and our defense stayed aggressive. We were frustrated that we gave up some offensive rebounds to Cleveland State, but with that exception, we played a solid 20 minutes against them."
(On BGSU's quick start to the second half)
"We've had a lot of halftime leads in the first three years of my career here, but we haven' always finished games off. This team expects to win, and they know they need to come out fired up. We got on them at halftime about opening the door late in the first half, and we came out wanting to put a nail in the coffin and put that game away early in the second half."
"The stat sheet doesn't tell the whole story. We didn't get a lot of points off the bench, but our bench played very well today, and we're more than just our starting five. I have more and more confidence that Carin Horne and Tene Lewis are going to spark us, and Casey McDowell is a calming influence out there. Our bench is getting better and better, and gives us another weapon when we go into games."
CSU COACH KATE PETERSON
"Let me just start by saying that I am very impressed with Bowling Green. They played very hard and are very talented. We knew coming in that they would really take it to us. We prepared as well as we could, but they hit some big shots, and really forced us to play catch-up basketball from the very start."
"Transition defense was our biggest problem this afternoon. And, as they continued to run on us, getting easy baskets, they really gained some momentum. We switched into a zone, trying to slow it up a little bit, and they hit two consecutive three-point shots that pretty much broke our back at that point."
