Quotes vs. Santa Clara
Kelly Graves - Head Coach
On the game overall…
“I hope we don’t make a habit of this. Having to come from behind, dig ourselves a hole and then try and dig ourselves out of it. But I was really proud of my team; they played with a lot of urgency in those final 3-4 minutes of regulation and then in overtime. We played smart during that stretch and played hard. We just have to find a way to start the game with that kind of passion and urgency right from the tip.”
On what wasn’t working early in the game…
“I don’t think we were very sound defensively, we put in time, we watch film, we go over things but for some reason when those lights go on sometimes we struggle with implementing the game plan and you have to give them a little of credit too. They are bigger than us and we are going to have matchup disadvantages all year long. They did a nice job beating us high low. Gilday is a heck of a player and we did a much better job on her in the second half but we let her lose too much in the first but we fixed it.
On Lexi Bando’s offensive performance…
“She’s a warrior, she competitive, if you watch she’s over there on the bench and with the team interacting at time outs she is passionate. We needed everyone of her points tonight, she’s got a ways to go but if she gives us that kind of effort every time she will be special.”
Jillian Alleyne – Oregon Forward, Junior
On the team thriving in comeback situations…
“It’s just something amazing to see because if you go back a couple years we weren’t like that, we would just lay down and let them take it. For us to fight, and we don’t know what the reason is but for us to just fight like that means a lot.”
On reaching 1,000 career rebounds…
“That means a lot to me, honestly. Rebounds are one thing that I’ve always been very prideful in since I’ve been playing basketball, so to have 1,000 rebounds is almost unreal.”
Lexi Petersen – Oregon Guard, Junior
On what clicked in overtime…
“It’s hard to say what exactly clicked, but on our team we have a lot of toughness and going through what a lot of us have been through while we’ve been here at Oregon, we want to win games. We know we have that opportunity with Kelly Graves to win a lot more games. For whatever reason we like to come out slow, but when it comes down to it we dig down and we figure it out.”
On the team thriving in comeback situations…
“It’s hard to say if it’s going to be like that every game, hopefully it’s not, hopefully we figure it out and play as hard as we do the last two minutes for 40 minutes.”
On Lexi Bando…
“I think she kept us in the game almost single handedly. She hit a lot of clutch threes to keep us within like seven or eight, and she was just very clutch throughout the whole game. She’s very composed to be a freshman and we really count on her.”
