North Alabama - First Round Press Conference Quotes
General Thoughts
Coach Terry Fowler: First of all I wanted to tip my hat off to Delta State, they did a great job, it was the third time we played them this year. I thought after we settled down a little bit, and made a run midway through the first half, I thought we were going to be okay. I was okay with the eight point deficit at the beginning of the half… we come right out and we score… and then I thought the big play of the game was when we were down, we cut it to five with an and-one, then we go right back and give up an and-one and they get it back to eight. The big key stat in the game was turnovers, we had 25 turnovers. We shot the ball at a 45% clip, but we just didn’t give ourselves enough possessions to give ourselves a chance to score points.
Q: Did the regular season sweep against Delta State give you confidence or do you think it served as motivation for them?
Fowler: No, I did and they did pretty much did what we thought they would do. They doubled our post play. They wouldn’t let us get the ball inside because that’s been our strong point this year. We’ve been able to do that all year. I thought our perimeters forced the ball in, we didn’t pass fake enough and we probably should have taken more perimeter shots to loosen up the defense a little bit. But I don’t think that played as a part of the motivation. It was a one-point game at their place and then we beat them by 10 point at our place, so these are two evenly matched programs.
Q: Were the turnovers because of the stage?
Terry Fowler: No I don’t think it was the stage, we don’t really pressure like they do. So it’s difficult to create those situations in practice to all of a sudden change and turn to that [kind of pressure]. We just weren’t strong enough with the basketball, which was one of the things we talked about. We knew they were going to come out and deny the ball. I thought we were going to have a few more opportunities to battle, but we didn’t.
Q to Corinne White: Your team had some big rallies there, what were your thoughts when your shots were going in?
White: Well I knew we needed to make some baskets and coach emphasized playing buddy ball, where you get the two post players working together, and fortunately my teammates were able to get me the ball in an open area and fortunately I was able to finish.
Q: Was it deflating not being able to get the stops when you guys cut the lead to five?
White: It was definitely frustrating but like coach said you got to keep going with the next play and you got to let the last one go, and that’s what we kept trying to do.
Q To Makena Randle: Can you talk about the strides this program has made under your coach and what you could do next year?
Randle: Like he told us from day one, we got to work hard. Hard work will take us where we need to go and teamwork is what we always strive to do. What we have returning [next season] will be the same thing, we lost three great seniors, but they really put something in us that we can carry with ourselves and we can get better every year.
Q: No one expected much out of you guys this year, what did you expect out of yourselves?
Mekena Randle: Well for me being new this year, I didn’t really know too much about what was expected of us. From day one, I felt like this was a great team, so I didn’t really see why people didn’t expect much, and I knew that our team wouldn’t let that dictate our season. So whatever people had to say about UNA last year didn’t faze this team. [The team] knew we were going to work hard and prove to other people that we can play.
