Post-Game Quotes: Michigan

Michigan State Head Coach Suzy Merchant

On Jenna Allen being the only senior on the team…
I think mentally it puts a lot on [Allen] to live up to a standard that is so uniquely different than everybody on their team. Even if you talk about like you still have other leaders like a Taryn [McCutcheon], you still have another leader like a Shay [Colley], it doesn't matter, when you're the only senior, that's a whole other animal that you have to take on. Jenna has done it as good as anyone who's never really had that role prior to their senior year.

On the team getting mentally tougher ahead of today's game…
We got after it the last two days, not the easiest of practices. It was literally you have more in the tank and you have to do more things competitively and you have to get back to grinding. Getting better mental and physical transitions, cutting hard. We played more people, that might've helped a little bit. I felt that the last two days of practice where we came with Michigan coming here, I don't care how many times they said they won, I'm like 'we're going to beat them,' and I felt that way because of how we practiced to be honest, I felt like we practiced really well. I think on matchups and what we have, I felt like if we played well, played hard, we'd win the game.

On challenging the team in practice in preparation for today's game…
We did a lot of live type stuff, quick change things, transitions, offense and defense, splitting them up, playing together. We also, I obviously do this but I didn't do this this year, we just weren't taking the defensive side of the ball as seriously as I thought we should, so we just, I don't have a lot of things I want them to do defensively, but we picked four things that we were absolutely not going to give in on. So if we don't hit those four goals in particular, then we have a few more, or we're just going to run for them, so if you don't want to run tomorrow, you don't give up more than four transition opportunities, don't not contest shots, we don't give up offensive rebounds. So, we just really tried to pair down a little bit, and we're just going to continue for the rest of the season because think it's one thing to have a goal and they're not buying in to it, and sometimes the way to buy into it is 'well, maybe I need to run a little bit to remind myself that this matters,' and so hopefully it helped.

On the crowd's influence…
When I saw the weather report I was kind of bummed, but then I drove to work and it seemed that it wasn't that bad. It felt good to have that kind of crowd for Michigan, we always appreciate that, like when we play them [at Michigan] they get a good crowd, which is great, but I also know we take four buses down there. I don't know how many buses they brought to our game, but I also know that our fans usually come out for that game. To have a sellout going into that game is a pretty cool thing, it doesn't happen very often in women's basketball.

On Michigan's full court press towards the end of the game…
I wanted to advance it but I don't want to waste my timeouts either because I wanted to have some for Jenna [Allen], that was part of it. I was a little disappointed in Taryn [McCutcheon] and Nia [Clouden] a couple of times and they were a little wild with the dribble and dribbled right in there. I was telling them 'just call a timeout, I have three of them.' We have to work a little maybe better on that, but in a women's game, you're not in that situation very much, quite honestly, so we don't do a ton of those kinds of special situations. There's less of that, so that's the first time that I felt that the game was dragging out to the point where I couldn't get it in the front court. That's something to work on and maybe just put in our repertoire.

Players Mentioned

Jenna Allen

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