Post-Game Quotes: Wisconsin
2/12/2025 10:47:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Michigan State Head Coach Robyn Fralick
Opening Statement...
I appreciate everyone braving the weather and the elements tonight, and hope everyone gets home safe. There was a lot of good things to take away from the game tonight, we knew coming in that Wisconsin is a tough matchup, especially their interior play. They are very physical and are just a tough matchup. I thought our team did a good job, we had much better pace and togetherness, especially on the offensive end. A lot of good things, and there's also a lot of things that moving forwards, we need to clean up. I think we have to guard the paint better, as well as off the ball. Inside, we have got to do a better job limiting offensive rebounds, because they're scoring directly off them, so we need to clean that up. Overall, very pleased with our response, especially from the game Sunday, I thought we played better team basketball today.
On Ines and Grace's performances...
A lot of credit to Grace for being really efficient, she had (Serah) Willams on her a lot, who is the reigning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, so a tough matchup. But I thought she did a good job picking her spots, getting balanced, getting good angles, and finishing, which was important for us to score at the rim, especially with their good interior defense. Then Ines it was fun to watch her, especially in that second half, I thought she picked her spots well with when to attack, finish, and made some good kick outs out of it. It was fun to see her do that.
On the teams excitement from Kennedy Blair and Abbey Kimball both scoring tonight....
I love that. One of our favorite lines in our program is 'star in the role you have, and work to the role you want, and when your called on be ready'. That's also just the way the world works, right? I was proud of Abbey, she went in, came back out, went back in, and shot it confidently. Kennedy finished with four rebounds, and that's one thing in practice too, she consistently rebounds the ball, so I am happy to see them do that.
On the post presence of the offense tonight...
Our inside-out basketball, we had 31 assists. We came out of the Michigan game and one of our biggest takeaways was, we need to get better shots. It's easy to say 'we missed a bunch of shots,' but we need to get better shots if we really want to play better basketball, and tonight we did. I thought we also did a good job of pushing the ball in transition and creating some advantage basketball.
On what it says about this team with Julia not scoring until the third quarter...
Balanced basketball. We scored 91 points and played balanced basketball. Jaddan (SImmons) and Nyla (Hampton) had 14 assists, one turnover. There just so many ways to impact the game, and the reality is with our team, when we're playing well, we have a full team effort. I thought we had good balance tonight.
 On what they improved upon from Sunday's game...
One of the things we watched in film and talked about was that effort is both sides of the ball. So often you think of effort as defensive effort. Effort is offensive effort, right? There's a pace to good offense, there's a pace to screening, there's a pace to cutting, there's a pace to passing, and we made a big point about how the effort has to be on both sides. So, getting back to base, and shot quality is a really important part of basketball, so we need to continue to find ways to do that well.
On Ines's ability to attack the rim tonight...
No, she's got that 'European Flash'. We see it, and freshman year there's highs and lows that go through a season, but tonight it was fun to watch her play loose and play confidently and aggressively. Defensively too, she just adds so much length to our team. I'm happy for her tonight.
