University of Houston Athletics
POST GAME QUOTES: Houston 64, UCF 55
2/3/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
HOUSTON HEAD COACH RONALD HUGHEY
Opening Statement
"The first thing that I want to say is, through it was rough 10-game losing streak, we have a team that is really resilient and came to work every day. They brought energy and effort, they brought the faith and the determination, and that is all because of all of our fans and everybody here at the university that supports us. We feel that energy and that is the thing that pulled us through; it will continue to push us through. Again, we wanted to come out and have an opportunity just to fight, fight for 40 minutes, take care of the basketball, score, and play relaxed and aggressive. I'm just so happy to get an opportunity to get a win."
On the defensive output at the end of the game
"It feels like it is coming together. We do back-to-back stops and score every day in practice. We try to understand that what we do on the defensive end is what we do on offensive end. Having a high focus on that end allows you to play more freely on the offensive end.
Thanks to Marche' (Amerson) and Alicia (Smith) finally taking that concept to heart we were able to come out with the win. Defense is something that we will always take pride and enthusiasm in. As long as we have that effort, determination and communication I'm always going to be proud of them."
On bench points and capitalizing on turnovers
"We have been preaching that. I just brought up those same two stats in the locker room. We felt like in games we were having a good start or if we weren't having a great start we felt like we had a chance to fight and get back, but then our bench would come in and we would have a drop off. We wanted to win the bench points so that everybody could come in and be enthused, be excited about being in the game, and bring something to the game.
The turnovers, we have been doing a good job of keeping our turnovers down. Tonight we had 19, but we had a chance to force 24 (turnovers). We talked about capitalizing off of those turnovers; we put a lot of emphasis on those two categories. We also emphasized getting to the free-throw line. I have been pressuring Marche' a lot about getting to the free-throw line. That is the one part of her game that she hasn't aggressively attacked yet and we wanted to continue to try and do that."
On the team's effort in the second half
"Exactly. Our young ladies bring their skills every day. They bring their skills with all the shots they can make, dribbling, passing, cutting, and moving. They're talented. We talked about bringing that will and focus for 40 minutes. For previous games, we would come for 37. We'd come for 33. We'd come for 28. Then we would have those blow minutes where we're not attacking. We're not being aggressive. We're not bringing that will to win. That was difference in the game. We brought that will this time for 40 minutes. Because they have been bringing it every day. It's just for 40 minutes with that focus and that was the difference in the game."
On never quitting on the team
"Exactly. Just like both of these young ladies said. Marche (Amerson) saying it was a collective effort from everyone and then Alecia (Smith) talking about it's what we do in practice every day. Make no mistake about it, even through those first ten games that we lost, we're still practicing hard. We're still giving that effort. We're still doing everything. We were just having some problems at certain points in the game where we didn't execute like we needed to and we had defensive breakdowns. Once we got those things corrected, we were too far behind or we would come back and make a few other mistakes.
But we've been doing it the right way and it's hard and everybody is on the same page. That's the thing that I love most about this team because it's easy to falter by the wayside and have your team grow apart with losing ten games. You could have people split up and everything, but we still stayed collectively together. They still shoot their 200 free throws. They're still getting their individual film in with their coaches. They're still getting their individual time with the coaches. I'm working out with three or four of them every morning. So we're still doing all those things besides practice and all our film stuff and all our scout stuff and we've added other things.
The one thing I can say about this team is that they're never going to quit. We're always going to stay together and continue to fight. That's the thing that I love. The faith that we have is we understand it's about giving every day to be the best that you can be. If we want to have an opportunity to follow what football is doing here with Coach (Tom) Herman and what Coach (Kelvin) Sampson is doing. We want to be there and not have a sore eye when it comes watching us. So they take some pride about that too. They want people here. We're a little jealous when we see seven or eight thousand in here for the men's game. We want that too. By coming down the stretch we're going to have an opportunity to have some big wins and put some pressure on some people."
HOUSTON SENIOR FORWARD MARCHE AMERSON
On the second half for her and the team
"This week we stressed confidence a lot so that helped us with people who were coming off the bench and contributing, and just having that confidence in themselves. That led to a collective effort from everyone, we stuck together throughout the whole game and it helped us have that drive to rebound, talk on the defensive end, and making shots."
On pushing yourself towards the end of the game
"I have been doing this for a while so I am ok with it. Just trying to give all that I have, and coach (Ronald Hughey) told me, 'to give as many hard minutes as you can and let me know when you need to get out.' When the game is on the line, you have to step up and just have to push through it and I wanted to be able to contribute for my team so I had to push through it."
HOUSTON SENIOR GUARD Alecia Smith
On effort during the game
"It really goes back to practice, everything we did today it was stressed in practice during the whole week. It is really just about bringing your effort and will every single day, and we did that and it carried over to the game."
On guard play
"It all goes back to practice, every day in practice we do stop score stop, and so it was a carry over on learning on how to continue to communicate, switch on screens, and just doing and focusing on the little things, and getting stops when we need to. It just carried over to the game."
