Bowling Green State University Athletics
From the Media Room
January 11, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 10, 2006
Recap | Final Stats
BUFFALO, N.Y. - The Bowling Green State University women's basketball team moved to 2-0 in MAC play with a 75-48 win at Buffalo Tuesday night (Jan. 10). Following the win, Falcon head coach Curt Miller met with the assembled media ...
(You have been a very good defensive team this year. What worked for you defensively?)
"Our defense was great tonight. Buffalo is really energized under coach Linda Hill-MacDonald, playing very good basketball. They were 6-3 over their last nine games, and that is no fluke. They got a very, very good MAC road win (over Miami Saturday). One of the things that stands out is their shooting percentage; they've had tremendous shooting success in those wins. One of our points of emphasis was keeping them below 45 percent shooting, and we were able to do that. We're a very scout-heavy team, and I thought my assistants had a great scouting report. But, also, we took away their first option, and tried to make them work very hard for their points."
(You went on a 10-0 run after UB took a 13-8 lead. Did you have to make some adjustments?)
"Well, we didn't panic, which is a credit to our kids. As we get more veteran leadership throughout our program, we have been in situations like that before. We know that road wins in the MAC are hard to come by, and that there are going to be some ups and downs throughout the game. We just talked about playing with more confidence at the offensive end, and we wanted to change the tempo. We wanted to push the basketball, try to get shots before they got the defenses set up, and try to get the game into the 70s."
(Megan Thorburn has scored in double digits in each of the last two games. Can you talk about her play?)
"We rewarded Megan for a good opening MAC game against Akron, and put her in the starting lineup, and she played very well again tonight. She stepped up and made four 3s - that's seven 3s in two games - and has given us a spark when we continue to struggle at the three-point arc. That shooting is still a concern of mine, but we are finding ways to score points, and finding ways to win despite the fact that we are not shooting the ball very well. We need to figure out how to get our three-point shooting corrected and play with a little more confidence, but Megan did a great job in both of those areas tonight."
"Megan has shown flashes of that scoring ability throughout her whole career. She has more starts than people realize, because we settled into a starting lineup midway through last year and stuck with it. But, certainly, Megan is capable of playing very, very well for us at the offensive end. Casey McDowell is a `steady Eddie' for us, plays very good defense, and is a coach on the floor for us. And, she has shown games where she can be explosive offensively. They both bring a lot to the table. A strength and a trademark of our system is our balance and versatility. We had four people in double digits in scoring tonight, and another with eight points. We don't depend on just one person, and that versatility and amount of capable scorers has helped our program get better and better over the years. We don't always get the conference awards, we don't always get the individual recognition, but on any given night, we have a number of people who can step up and take the load off of other people's shoulders."
