The first thing I look for in a story I watched is coach and player quotes. Here’s a couple of stories on the Monnesota game with new stuff.
This is from the Minnesota Daily, the student paper.
“The whole game we were confident that we were going to win. We just needed to turn it up a little bit,” Gophers junior guard Joanna Hedstrom said. “We read their defense as far as they were coming out on us because we hit some threes in the first half, and so we really focused on driving and getting to the basket.”
The Gophers made only seven of 19 three-point attempts, their lowest percentage of the season, but took advantage of a spread-out Kent State defense in the fourth quarter to win.
“We had to find ways to score other than the three-point line. When they started taking threes away, we got kind of frustrated and didn’t know what to do and kind of got into a slump,” Wagner said. “Once we started driving and getting the ball inside and finding people inside, then the game started to pick up for us again.”
Hedstrom contributed five rebounds and a career-high 11 points in 31 minutes off the bench for the Gophers.
“[Hedstrom] was absolutely outstanding, a solid force off of the bench,” Stollings said. “She played three different positions and had some really timely rebounds for us and very good defensive stops — things that don’t show up on a stat sheet.”
“We threw the ball away a little bit loosely tonight. We’re a lot better than that,” Stollings said. “I just thought we lacked aggressiveness at times, but again, those are things that we’ll continue to work on and improve upon.”
Here’s the full story:
http://mndaily.com/sports/womens-basketball/2015/11/24/gophers-beat-kent-state
This is from the Record-Courier story that wasn’t posted until Thursday for some reason. It has fresh quotes from O’Banion. All I had was the post game radio interview. (I’m traveling and wasn’t at the game. There must have been a true posgame press conference because of the double header. There usually isn’t. The Stater and I are usually the only reporters at the games.)
“At the end of the day we need to do a better job of taking away what they want to do down the stretch, which is give the ball to their best player,” said KSU coach Danielle O’Banion. “In the third quarter (against Minnesota) we were winning the 50-50 plays. There were some sequences where I thought we were tougher than they were. Down the stretch we’re still trying to find our courage in those situations, but what we talked about in the locker room was we can realistically play with anyone on our schedule. The question becomes when are we going to decide to beat them? We’re always going to be in the mix, but now it’s time for us to grow up and make those (key plays dow nthe stretch.)”
A Korinek layup tied the contest at 70 with just under four minutes to play.
“It’s really fun to see Jordan grow daily, because it’s literally happening daily,” said O’Banion. “You can hear Jordan’s voice more and more in practice, you can hear it more and more in games. She’s demanding the basketball, and she’s being productive when she gets it. She’s a special player. She has a chance to be one of the greats here at Kent State.”
Kent State trailed 24-7 out of the gate and 29-16 after one quarter, then held a Minnesota team that had eclipsed 90 points in each of its first two games this season to 25 total points in the second and third quarters.
“We had to show resolve early in this game. That’s a sign of tremendous growth for this group, and I’m excited about that,” said O’Banion. “Digging out of that hole in the first quarter was big for this group. Also being in position to have to force a very good offensive team to be a very good offensive team (in the fourth quarter) shows an improvement in our defensive intensity and focus over last week. Now we just need to be able to finish the job.”
Here’s the whole story.
http://www.recordpub.com/sports/2015/11/24/kent-state-women-s-basketball-team-plays-minnesota-tough-before-falling-85-73