Post Game Quotes: Coach Merchant vs. Northwestern

What did you say at halftime? I noticed sort of a different energy coming into the second half and even towards the end of the game. What did you say to your players?
Well, it was a very spirited conversation, I'll say that. We were down quite a bit on the road when we were at Maryland and I was, you know, 'Polly positive' trying to pump them up to just stay in the fight, and that didn't work.

I was just really disappointed in our toughness and our competitiveness in the first half. It's hard to coach effort - I say this all the time, you can't coach attitudes and effort. If you have to do that, you're not going to be a very good team, right? It's not my job to coach their attitudes and it's not my job to coach their effort level, that's on them and then it's our job to kind of put them in positions. So, I felt like the only difference was … I mean, I really, really got into them. Really got into them, and they decided to respond.

You know we got a lot of good opportunities. Had we maybe done a better job finishing up the free throw line - shooting 50% (11 for 22) seems to be, you know, something that kind of haunted us a little bit today. You know, I liked our effort and our energy and our toughness for sure. So, what I said I probably shouldn't repeat, but it definitely seemed to, you know, catch their attention, I guess.

I think we talked about a few different times kind of the scoring droughts in quarters or in halves. I mean, what's kind of going to go into your offense trying to fix those in these quarters and halves and try to get consistency from quarter to quarter?
I agree. We ran the exact same offense in the first half as we did the second, but I think our energy level [was different]. I think sometimes the kids duck in but it's not really with great energy or effort or toughness to really want the ball. I think in the first half we tended to play a little more selfishly – we didn't move the ball or share the ball. We decided just to kind of go a little bit bigger in the second half, which we had been practicing. And maybe that's something we have to look at, you know, until our guards can be consistent. We just need to find some tough kids that can kind of produce a little bit.

I thought, you know, playing Smitty [Alisia Smith] and Taiyier [Parks] together some was good. The problem is it's just hard to play them extended minutes like that, you know, with foul trouble and their size and whatnot, especially down the stretch. I thought they did a really good job of doing what they could to duck in and take advantage of their size inside.

With Taiyier, specifically in that third quarter coming out the gate really hot, she got a few buckets early. What are you gonna say about her performance, especially in that second half.
Yeah, I mean she was very physical. I mean they didn't really have an answer for her power, you know Tai is a little more power, and Smitty is a little more finesse. But I thought Tai did a really good job of ducking in and holding her seal. And I'm going to give Janai [Crooms] a lot of credit because I thought she did a great job of finding them when they needed to. She's by far our best post-entry passer on the team. She reads skips, she's playing extremely well, she was great defensively tonight. She did everything that I felt like she could within you know her abilities and did a great job of getting the ball inside so a lot of Tai's and Smitty's scores really came from Janai understanding that 'hey we got to get the ball inside' and she did a good job of giving it to them when they needed it, where they needed it, so that they can make an easy move.

Going back to Janai [Crooms] , can you kind of take me through just the urgency and the fire that she really had that there in the second half? She kind of tried to help lead you guys back there.

Janai plays with just a lot of guts and toughness - I mean she had five steals and she led us in assists. You know, she sets people up, she runs the break, she is a good size guard. I thought she did a much better job on Pulliam in the second half than the first. She just had a little different look in her eye for sure there. She made some big plays for sure for us. But yeah, I mean we need her and her energy. She brings it like that every day - I mean even in practice or shoot around, she's like the loudest kid out there. She's fully engaged in what's going on. I really do feel like she's a big part of like our ability to progressively get better. And it's just kind of fun to see her starting to feel more comfortable out there you know she had almost 30 minutes I think - and they were a really solid 30 minutes. Really solid.

You had to like the look that you got there late for Nia [Clouden] at the end there – could you just take us through your thoughts on the final play there?
Yeah, we weren't sure if they were gonna zone it or man it, or what they were going to do. We kind of were prepared for a slip off of that. And we were prepared for them to kind of face guard Nia. So we ran that little gate screen, she got open which actually a surprise – it surprised me too. If she didn't have the look we're going to have one more pass or skip to the corner for Julia [Ayrault]. So, we felt like we had two of our best shooters right there with opportunities to take those shots. I felt good about her taking it and then Ju did a great job of hustling in there, getting the rebound and kicking it back out for another one.
I thought the second one Cloudey [Nia Clouden] rushed it a little bit. I think she wasn't sure exactly how much time she had - she maybe could have gathered herself a little more. But still -at the end of the day, it was a kid you want taking shots like that down the stretch. We got the shot we wanted, with the person we wanted, and got a second look at it so I felt pretty good about how we ended it. Again, that free throw line is the thing that really haunted us today. We needed to capitalize there for sure.

I know you mentioned what you said at halftime to the team but after, you know, a hard fought game like this with a lot of energy in the second half, what do you what were you telling the team in the locker room after tonight.
I was just talking to them about how if we're going to continue to be a good team, we have got to bring that for four quarters. I thought at Indiana we brought it for three, and then in the fourth corner we kind of just faded away a little bit. Like in the beginning the first half we were down - we scored seven points in a quarter, but yet in the third quarter we come out score 24. I mean, what's the difference? The difference was their effort and their energy level and so if we can tap into that … My thing is let's tap into that from the beginning of the game. Why does it take us to be down for us to get upset about something, you know? For us to be in control like we need a little more leadership out there and a little more toughness for 40 minutes, versus 20 minutes or 35 or whatever it is.

We were showing signs and we have a lot of new faces out there too. I mean, even some of the kids that are playing some extended minutes for us now didn't play a lot last year or are transfers this year so we're still blending. I really liked our fight and I was proud of our second half I just, I don't believe in moral victories, so we still lost. Nobody's going to ask you what the score was, they are going to ask what your record is. We had a chance to tie ourselves with them and give them another loss and be right up there. This kind of came down to two home games - Nebraska and this one - where we if we bring energy and toughness for 40 minutes, we might have a different outcome. So, lessons to be learned. But we're running out of time to learn them. I told them that in the next game we had better bring it for 40 minutes, because everybody's good enough to beat you in this league. Everybody.

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Nia Clouden

Alisia Smith

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