Post Game Quotes: Minnesota
2/5/2024 8:44:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Michigan State head coach Robyn Fralick
Opening statement …
I'm really proud of our team for finding a way to beat a good Minnesota team. A team we played a few weeks ago, and really struggled against. I thought it was the tail of two halves. We had a really good second half. There's some things we can definitely learn moving forward, but I'm proud of our overall effort. I thought we did a lot of things better from a few weeks ago.
On the full court press …
The trick we had is that we hadn't scored. They scored 10 points in the second quarter and scored nine in the first two minutes to start the second half. It really helped us because we were able to score off our press set, and we scored when we got in our press set. I thought our ability to score helps us get our full court pressure where we want it to be.
On beating Minnesota without their best player …
There are no easy wins in this league. I think we were really focused on Minnesota. Just having to played them a few weeks ago and losing, we knew we had a physical and well coached team. That's where all of our time and effort has been. We got more big games this week, and we'll tackle those when they are in front of us. If there is one thing I've learned really quickly is that there are no easy wins in this league. Any win, you've got to savor it and get ready for the next one.
On if the NCAA Tournament is the goal for this team …
I think that's the goal. I think that's a good target. I also think that's a hard target. We need to continue to stay in pursuit of that.
On the improvement of offense from the previous Minnesota loss …
The Minnesota game had a lot of elements to it. One of them was the first time around. We got derailed, and that's on me. Looking back, we got away from things that we knew would help us. And when you lose, you look really closely. It wasn't just that game, if you looked closely at how we are and how we've been successful, I thought we got back to that tonight. I thought that game zoomed in on us and made us look at things to do better.
On navigating a tough upcoming schedule …
You've got to have a good mix of rest and focus. The time that you get to prepare has to be really sharp and concise and easy to execute. So that's where we are. The reality is the whole league has different stretches of lots of games, consistency and toughness are really important if you want to be good. We are going to be tested, especially this week.
On it being a fast game …
It was a fast game. You got to be able to score multidimensionally, tonight we did that. We made threes, we scored off turnovers, which the first time we couldn't score off turnovers. We found ways to score inside.