March 7, 2003

Recap |  Box Score

Santa Clara

Head Coach Michelle Bento:
Opening remarks: "We came here to take care of business. We did a good job of seetting the tone with our defensive intensity. We took LMU out of it with our defense and we did a better job with our offensive rebounding."

On inspiring team: "It's tough to beat a team twice, but it wasn't hard ot get my team up for the game. We had to focus on ourselves, regardless of who we played."

On team strengths: "One of our strengths is balance. We have a lot of shooters and when we get our inside game going it makes it a lot easier to get shots on the outside."

On Rondel: "She had a cut on her nose and got five stitches during the game. As far as I know, she's good to go. She's been big off of the bench for us."

On offensive emphasis: "We don't bank on our perimeter game, but we want that balance. We have to establish the inside game. We want to focus on getting the ball inside to our three very strong post players."

Kendra Rhea:
On offensive tempo: "We like to push the ball up the floor. So, we were happy with the tempo and how we played."

On tourney format: "It worked out with our seed because we're still playing three games. In that way, it's no different from last year's tournament. It was weired waiting while other teams were playing, but when we steepedd on the floor we were ready to go. We knew we were going to play one of two teams. We've played all the teams in the conference twice so we had plenty of time to prepare."

Quinn Thomas:
On balanced offense: "The key to our offense is when we get it inside. When we can get the post, we can get open outside. It's a key to our success."

Loyola Marymount

Julie Wilhoit:
Opening remarks: "It's just a dissappointing way to end the season. Facing Santa Clara, I was very optimistic because of the way we had played our last game against them. We started the game a little flat. We were better in the second half but you cant give a team like that a head start."

Rachel Ziemann:
On her 15 points: " I just want to play and play hard. Their guards scored a lot of points. Defensively, I could have done a lot better. Santa Clara deserved to win, especially with the way we played in the first half."

On Post play of SCU: "If they didn't get the ball down in the post, they hit their shots from the outside. It was back and forth, we knew they were on. We knew it was coming, the coaches prepared us but we didn't get it done."