Post-Game Quotes: Rutgers

MSU head coach Suzy Merchant

On playing the zone and coming back to win…
We have been working on it a little bit. Mostly because we have so many kids injured, and sicknesses, and concussions, knee problems that need injections so they will be out for three days. It's something we have had in the bag and been working at it. I'm not a big fan of it but our situation of losing some key athletes makes it tough. That's another thing, Dreika (Cook) can guard anybody in the gym and she is a big guard. Shay (Colley), and Coco (Gaines) same thing - two kids that are very skilled defensively and we feel that a little bit. So we went to the zone and we felt good about it. I thought our kids did a really good job of recognizing where their shooters were, but again that is a team that doesn't have prolific three-point shooters so it made some sense to go to. We still have a lot of work to do. It helped us not putting them at the foul line, slowed them down a little bit. Their offense took a while to get through; they ran a lot of stuff toward the zone so by the time they got a shot off I felt that we had good rebounding coverage. That helped us and ignited us. It was good to see Taryn (McCutcheon) hit some shots, along with some others, so it was good and we needed it. We needed a little bit of depth.

On the feeling after the game with the players…
It just felt good, it just felt it had been a while. We had a tough stretch where we played those five games and we were in that losing streak, where four of those five teams were the top of the league and with three of them being on the road. We had Northwestern at home, which we played awful and deserved to lose that one, give them all the credit. Then we had to go on the road at Iowa, then again to Maryland, then to Northwestern, and in between then we had Purdue. We got Purdue on Wednesday, and that was when Dreika tore her Achilles in practice the day before the game. Tuesday before that Kayla Belles hurt her knee to the point where she was getting an MRI and we thought her season was over, so two kids that were pretty key going into that Purdue game and we were obviously worried about both of them. Thankfully Kayla was able to come through, she played sore but she played. Losing Dreika is hard, she's a leader and she is a great kid, just really believes in everyone. It felt like you got punched in the gut. I felt like a dark cloud from that practice carried over to the game. Credit Purdue for playing the way they played, but I felt like we were a little zombie-like from what happened the day before. It was a hard week with Purdue and those five games were very challenging games, and some challenging circumstances. I always tell the kids, stay in the fight you can't give up, you have to find a way. Taryn's finger is finally starting to feel better. I felt like at Northwestern, where she shot the ball 14 times and she got really good looks, it didn't look like it bothered her as much as it had. She had played about five or six games with a broken finger on the shooting hand. The kid is out there giving everything she can, so that is a pretty good scorer for us that we didn't have during that stretch as well. It is good to see her start to come back, and I think she will be a big part of how we finish.

On the reasoning behind Tory (Ozment) starting over Nia (Hollie)….
Yeah, because she scores, she has a better field-goal percentage and can score. She is more offensive and it's nothing against anybody, when you are on a losing streak, you kind of have to look at what the problem is. The problem was we can't score the ball at times. I think when you look at Tory, she can extend it, she shoots the ball; I think she was shooting 45 percent from the arc, or from the two's; and 41 percent from the arc and she has had kind been in-and-out too. Some concussions and things like that but we just kind of felt like we needed a change. I think their position coach Dean (Lockwood, said I think we need to kind of look at some things different. We thought about playing the two big posts together, or should we give one of these guys a shot and when we really look at it, I think giving Tory that opportunity was the right thing to do because we were switching one through four, that made sense a little bit more from a defensive standpoint, too. She was quite honestly, shooting the ball, percentage wise, better and a struggle for us not making shots, so we wanted to go with kids that we felt like could help us a little bit more. Whether they did or not, we just knew it was in them. They are better offensive players at that time. Maybe not better defense. Maybe not better communicators, but when you have lost a handful in a row, you should change your starting lineup. Dean kind of came to me and said, hey I think this might be something that we should look at and I agreed with him.

On the defensive focus going into this game especially on Arella Guirantes…
Well, we had to do a better job than we did the first time. I think she had 28 on us, so the zone, I mean when we were man, we were trying to do a better job of denying her and then switching one through four, so she had someone on her; she is just very crafty and sneaky. I mean we cut her off the baseline and our guy would stop, and she would take one more dribble and go finish on the other side. That was a little disappointing in our man, but when we got in our zone, we were really able to key where she was at. She's a good three-point shooter, but not a prolific one. She is more off the bounce; a pull up jumper, a dribble, so we would try to - when she put it on the floor, try to collapse on her and shoot the gap a little bit more and make her pass it out to someone else who isn't quite as good of a three-point shooter. I thought our kids did a really good job with that the second half.

Players Mentioned

Kayla Belles

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