Post-Game Quotes: Nebraska

Michigan State head coach Suzy Merchant

On cleaning up the defense in the second half but not converting on offense…
We had some good looks at it too. It didn't help that we didn't have Julia (Ayrault); she had a little bit of an injury, so she couldn't play the second half. And she's a pretty good face-up four man that creates offense for us. That was a little bit difficult for us, and then some people off the bench weren't very good offensively at times, so that was a little bit of a struggle too.

It's great to clean things up in the second half, but you already spot somebody nine (points), and to me, I know we were down nine and I can see three 3-point shots right in our face with like three seconds to go (in the shot clock), and it wasn't even like we challenged them, we were just like, Oh, they'll probably miss, I'll kind of get a hand up. So our urgency had to change a little bit.

Give them credit, first half, they're a hard matchup with 34 (Isabelle Bourne) at the 3, and again, we worked on never being behind her in the post, and we were satisfied with staying behind her a lot. So yeah, we cleaned things up, but again, offensively, we kind of got away from what has helped us, you know, passing the ball, sharing the ball, moving it, we didn't skip the ball much and attack from there, so I think a lot of that stuff was a little self-inflicted, quite frankly.

On pressing and mixing up the defenses…
We knew we were going to need to use that, I think at some point, certainly we've had it this whole time, we just haven't used it a ton. Their size presents a problem. Their 3-man is 6-foot-2, 6-3, and is a scoring kid. We might have someone who is 6-2 at that spot, or who can play someone there, but they're more face-up than they are post up, so their power was a problem, their rebounding was a little bit of an issue, and they were doing a good job of getting 34 an opportunity at looks, and then No. 4 (Sam Haiby), she's a really good north and south guard; it was kind of disappointing to see her even hit a 3, because that's really not her game. But we felt like we had to gap her a little more, so we went with the zone, and pressure back to zone, which I thought was effective.

Again, it was more of our offensive side of the ball, we just were very flat and again, I don't know if I'm playing too many people. I said this to the team, everybody's getting time, and I guess maybe now it just needs to be people that kind of need to earn it, I guess. I'm trying to keep too many people happy and it's just not working.

On the difficulty at the end with Julia Ayrault out and Nia Clouden fouled out…
That's tough, because we run some actions that get the four man a look, especially for the three, so we didn't really have that strong of a shooter from there, in terms of what they've consistently done for us, and as you know, Nia is someone who can create her own shot, she can get an and-one, she's really good at kicking it at times to, when they helped, so we kind of lost two pretty important scorers down the stretch there.

But we still had a good look at the bucket to send it in to overtime, they extended the game, we did what we had to do, (Bella Cravens) missed the free throws, came down, I felt (Alyza Winston) should have took the first one, you know, she hesitated and I'm not sure why, because that's something that we need her to do more of, is when she's open like that, that's gotta be something that she does for our team. But give them credit, maybe she could have shot faked and sidestepped versus just put it down, but (Kate) Cain is pretty big, and maybe she could have got a cleaner look. I thought (Janai Crooms) did a good job of kicking it to her, and we had a good look at it, she just didn't get it off.

Players Mentioned

Julia Ayrault

Nia Clouden

Janai Crooms

Alyza Winston

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