Oregon-TCU Post-game Notes and Quotes
03/19/05 | Women's Basketball
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, First Round
Bank of America Arena, Seattle, Wash., March 19
Postgame Notes
Oregon 58, TCU 55
TCU had a chance to tie, but Ashley Davis missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Oregon won its first NCAA Tournament game since 1999 (65-56 over Cincinnati), having lost First Round Games in its last two appearances. The Ducks improved to 5-11 all-time in Tournament play.
Oregon allowed the fewest points in an NCAA Tournament game in school history.
The Lady Frogs lost a First Round Tournament game for the first time in program history, having won four straight. TCU drops to 4-5 in the Tournament overall.
TCU led 46-38 at the 9:49 mark, but Oregon followed with a 10-2 run to tie the game and scored seven unanswered points to take a 55-50 lead at the 2:58 mark.
The Lady Frogs were held scoreless for a period of 3:53 during the Ducks run.
TCU had a three-game winning streak (all in the C-USA Tournament) snapped.
Sandora Irvin fouled out of the game with 1:29 to play, the third time this season she's fouled out. After scoring two points in the first half, she finished with 14 points on 5-for-19 shooting and seven boards.
Irvin blocked six shots, an NCAA Tournament career high and TCU Tournament record. Irvin finishes her career with 480 blocks, the NCAA career record.
Irvin finishes with 150 blocks this season, two shy of the NCAA single-season record.
Oregon's Cathrine Kraayeveld, a native of Kirkland, Wash., scored 23 points, her 24th time in double-figures this season, seventh with 20-plus and one off her season high. It was the most points scored by a Duck in the NCAA Tournament since Angelina Wolvert also had 23 in a loss to Rutgers in 1998.
Corrie Mizusawa played all 40 minutes and handed out eight assists.
TCU had just seven assists as a team, a season low.
Natasha Lacy scored double-figures for the sixth straight game and 18th time this season.
TCU shot just 25.0% in the first half and 27.6% for the game (season low ? 26.8%). Ashley Goodwin (1-1) was the only Lady Frog to shoot at least 50%.
Oregon is now 4-1 at neutral sites, TCU 7-1.
TCU is 1-2 this season when tied at halftime; this was Oregon's first tie.
TCU outscored Oregon 14-0 in second-chance points.
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, First Round
Bank of America Arena, Seattle, Wash.
Postgame Quotes, TCU vs. Oregon, March 19, 2005
Oregon Head Coach Bev Smith
General Comments: "This is a great victory for us, not only as a team but as a program. We weathered the storm, we were down but we never ever were out. TCU is a very good basketball team and Sandra Irving is a very good basketball player. We got after her with our great post players we have here at Oregon. Namely Cathrine and our little freshman that came in. When Gabrielle was walking up the stairs our players said she is not a freshman any more, so we now have a sophomore on our starting lineup. We struggled a little bit on our outside shots, if we hit those in the beginning we would have opened things up more in the first half. We just went to our strengths in the second half, banging the ball inside and on defense we were gritty and we were tough, we mixed it up between man on man and zone. We did a great job making them a half court team not letting them play their transition game. Offensively things really brook apart when we did hit some outside shots. When Brandi hit that outside shot it really opened up things and got the crowd into it. What a great basketball game for ESPN TV."
On Baylor: "They have a great conference, they have made national headlines with the games they have won this year. That's a great matchup for us, we both have strong inside games. We are going to go to our strengths and we are going to have to defend their strengths in order to win that game. Knowing that we had this match up after TCU we knew this would be a great match up for us. They are a number two seed and one of the top six or seven teams in the nation."
On team's mentality: "What Corrie said so eloquently is that this year we have looked at Oregon and what we need to do to play our best, in a sense that we just looked at what we need to do to be a successful basketball team. What we really have focused on this year is being a strong defensive team -- we are very long, and we use our length in terms of playing man to man. Corrie is one of the smartest players I have been around. People talk about how she can pass the ball but she really is like a fifth coach out there for us. Cathrine and Andrea are outstanding not just on the offensive end but also on the defensive end. We out rebounded TCU tonight, which was a big thing for us. We were trying to get the ball to our strengths, which is our inside game number one, and we have players like Catherine that can play inside and outside. Tonight we played her a lot at the three position, where we had Gabe and Dre inside. You're looking at 6-4, 6-4, 6-3. We didn't just guard her with one player, we had two or three."
On the last 10 minutes of the game: "Our defensive was really good for 25-30 minutes, then Sandora started to break out some more. They set some screens for her and did some isolations, that's when we went to our 2-3 matchup and to our 1 zone also, just to give their perimeter players some different looks and have Sandora step outside. We were a little more successful defensively against her there. To help us stay in the game we have to focus on switching up our defenses. We did a great job of communicating and our players love changing things up."
On game change once Sandora Irvin fouled out: "At that point a wounded animal is the most dangerous animal. At that point our players began to understand their defense and hit some shots. We have some players that can shoot the three. I think we did a really good job, our players remained focused. We wanted to make sure they didn't get any open looks with that last shot."
On Brandi Davis' play: "She is a very good shooter. This is an exciting time for us. We kind of weathered the first half without any outside shooting. I thought Brandi had some great looks and the ball raddled in and out, for a shooter like that she just needs one shot to fall. We waited a long time for it, but once she did it released a lot of pressure from our post play inside. I think that's what the NCAA tournament is about, you need to find someone to hit that open shot. Things are usually won on these kinds of things in the paint."
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, First Round
Bank of America Arena, Seattle, Wash.
Postgame Quotes, Oregon vs. TCU, March 19, 2005
Oregon Players
GUARD CORRIE MIZUSAWA
On home crowd: "We knew we would get all of our fans here. That is good for us to have all of those fans going crazy. It gives us an advantage to come here to Seattle and have so much support from our fans. We are just happy that we were able to pull out the win."
On Sandora Irvin: "It is obvious that their best player was Sandora Irvin. If we can limit her shooting and scoring than we knew that would be a big blow to their halfcourt offense. We also limited her transition points because we always had three players crashing the boards. She is an All-American and a phenomenal player. We just need to make sure that we limited her time with the ball and in the post and we did a great job of that tonight."
FORWARD CATHRINE KRAAYEVELD
On playing close to home: "I had some friends and family here, but we also had a lot of people that drove up from Eugene. That just shows how dedicated our fans really are when you see how much they care about us. It really does give us some confidence when we get on a run and they are cheering us along. We are happy that they are here."
On playing against Sandora Irvin: "We knew that she was a great player, but the key was that we were able to keep her at her average of about 20 points. I think that we played her pretty well tonight."
On close ending: "I don't know if we really felt like we had that much of the momentum. They are a great team and we felt good at the very end when we hit some free throws. We knew that we just had to play some solid defense and not foul, we did a great job of executing that down the stretch."
FORWARD GABRIELLE RICHARDS
On playing against Sandora Irvin: "We knew that she was a great player and that she could put up some great numbers. We knew that we were going to have to box her out for the rebounds work as hard as we could against her."
On playing first NCAA tournament game: "To be honest, before I got here I really didn't know much about NCAA basketball. It was just amazing to play in such a great environment in the spotlight with all of those people cheering for you. This why I came out here for and I am really enjoying it, I think it's awesome."
GUARD BRANDI DAVIS
On her game and the crowd: "All throughout the game my shot wasn't going but I kept on shooting. It was great they are supportive on our court and away whether they are here or not we feel their presence."
On their comeback: "We wanted this a lot, we wanted this big win a lot. We went out there and basically what we said for the second half is, ?We are going to play all heart,' and that's exactly what we did."
On playing Baylor tomorrow: "Baylor's a tough team and all of the teams that are in this tournament aren't going to be easy. We're just looking forward to getting our scout done and practicing, things like that, and we're looking forward to the next game."
On Andrea Bills and other teammates: "She's a great player, I mean, you can't take that away from her. She got the conference player of the year and I think all our player did a great job they were focusing on our scout, stuff like that."
On possibly losing the game: "We were pretty confident about it, that we were going to be able to stay, and are just really happy with the outcome and the way things went."
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, First Round
Bank of America Arena, Seattle, Wash.
Postgame Quotes, TCU vs. Oregon, March 19, 2005
TCU Head Coach Jeff Mittie
General Comments: "Just down the stretch we didn't execute very well. You are not going to be able to go 11 minutes without a field goal, which is what we did. We had the chance of being very successful. We were quite fortunate that we were still in the game. I thought our defense was solid all day long. I thought teams were very physical all day long, and points were hard to come by in this one. They probably executed what they wanted to do down the stretch. Not probably--they did execute what they wanted to do down the stretch, and Ashley Davis does a good job at the end, and it just goes in and out. So it was a tough one to loose, but I think Oregon did what they wanted to do down the stretch, and I think the credit goes to them because points were hard to come by today."
On Oregon switching their defense on them: "I thought it was difficult all day long. Our execution was not very good all day long. As talented as we are, we are pretty much a ?motion' team, and today we ran the ?motionless-motion', and that was difficult. We just seemed to struggle and be out of sync most of the day, and some of that credit has to go to Oregon, and some of it falls on us for not executing what we talked about. I thought we caught too much. Natasha talks about, ?I thought they were in a different defense every time.' And one of the things we talked about is, ?I don't care what kind of defense they are in. Don't concern yourself with that, because they are going to switch it. Get in the gaps ? read the gaps of what they are in,' and you can tell that we didn't do a good enough job of that. So we were matched up a lot with them on the perimeter, which was making their zone, or whatever defense they were in, very easy for them. And even in the first half, when it was tied, we had a lot of shots at the end of the shot clock, where we didn't have much. And then in the second half, Oregon did it back to us. They hit the emotional shots. Brandi Davis hits the 3, and then they called timeout with ten seconds left on the shot clock. It was a tough day for us all day long. It was challenging for our staff to find where we could find our points to win this game. We thought at the 13 or 14 minute mark that we were going to make a push, because that is what we did in the conference tournament. In the last 10 minutes of the game, we played our best basketball. But it didn't happen today."
Concerns on the post: "Kraayeveld and Richards had a lot of points on the post going into halftime. They had 23 of their 27, and Ervin was only 1 of 6 in the field. The problem wasn't on the defensive end. It was in the offense where they hurt us with their line up. We felt like it was going to be a 40 minutes, but we just couldn't get open space all day long. I think we did a pretty good job with our pressure in the first half. Fouls hurt us a little bit. We had some fouls in the first half that took away some aggression out of our guards. Oregon has a fine basketball team, and I thought they were better down the stretch than we were."
On the last sequence: "The game ended the way that it did all day, and we didn't really execute well at all. Davis did a good job, and we were supposed to get her a screen on that side, but we couldn't get her the screen. She did a good job to separate, and Oregon did a good job of not fouling her. They got in her face during her shot, but the ball just went in and out. We put ourselves in a tough position where we had to foul at the end of the game."
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament, First Round
Bank of America Arena, Seattle, Wash.
Postgame Quotes, TCU vs. Oregon, March 19
TCU Players
GUARD NATASHA LACY
On Oregon Defense: "It seemed to me that every other play down the court, they were switching defense. They were going with either their one-three-one zone, or the two-three matchup-zone, or man. We were calling plays, we just weren't executing them well. They did a good job of disrupting our offense and giving us different looks."
On Sandora Irvin: "I think Sandora has done a great job her four years here. She found a way, along with the seniors that were here last year, to put our name out there for TCU. Playing with Sandora is unbelievable; if you get beat on defense she is there to get a blocked shot, she'll grab rebounds, and she is a huge threat offensively."
On Next Season: "Next year, we are losing two starters in Niki Newton and Sandora, but we do have leadership now. Some of the younger players won't be so young, they're growing and they have been in this situation before. Hopefully, when we get the newcomers coming in we can just add them into the group and keep going."
FORWARD SANDORA IRVIN
On career at TCU ending: "We played hard, it was a tough team to beat. Oregon came out of nowhere and just played really well. My team this whole season has been great, I felt like this was one of our best seasons, even though we were pretty young. Our sophomores and our freshmen have just stepped up this year and really played well. It was a tough game, Niki was crying, we had a great season together. Being at TCU together for four years has been really good. Usually I cry after a game, but after this game for some reason I thought that there was really nothing to cry about. I'm content with how we played, sometimes that ball just doesn't fall in the hoop, and that is what happened tonight."
On Oregon's size: "It was really frustrating because it was so packed in there. I thought my teammates were inside, but in actuality it was some of their post players who are huge. They were forcing us baseline, and it was tough to get a shot, and it was tough to find an opening when they trapped. They made it really tough, we kept having to go baseline and throw it out of that trap."
