Post Game Quotes 11/24/13

Nov. 24, 2013

Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery

UConn Head coach Geno Auriemma

Opening Statement:

"Yeah, it was a nice weekend. I'm sure the players enjoyed it. It was a lot more rewarding for them than practice for three days, so they need a break. It was good today to get them off and running, we're off Monday and Tuesday and then we'll get together on Wednesday. It's funny we play all these games in a short period of time and now we have four games in a month but that's how it goes."

On post players:

"I told those guys that they should make sure Stefanie gets Christmas presents because when she's on the floor, she gets all those guys shots. She does such a great job of finding people at the perfect time and she's just so confident right now. She threw a couple great passes today and Stewie is becoming a much better passer and I think Kiah Stokes is becoming the beneficiary of those passes. Obviously you want to see that down the road against a higher level of competition but all in all I think the three of them have played really well with a few exceptions in these eight games."

On monitoring player improvement:

"There's things that you can do on a basketball court regardless of who the competition is that can make you stand out as a basketball player. There's things that I see when we're practicing at home and you can tell who's a good basketball player and who's not. You can tell who has improved and who hasn't. It doesn't always have to depend on who you're playing against. Kiah has gotten better because there were times last year when even against this kind of competition, she wouldn't have played well, she wouldn't have gotten a lot of things done. So yeah, she has improved and made great strides. Moriah the same thing, she has made great strides in a lot of areas and obviously they got a long way to go to catch up to Stefanie and Kaleena. But they are way ahead of where they were last season, and that's a big plus."

Senior Center Stefanie Dolson

On post player:

"We've been working really hard on the post end and I'm proud of how we've been finishing and posting up. Kiah has been doing a great job getting position down there and finishing well underneath. We're going to keep working hard and keep finishing."

On rhythm with Stewart and Stokes:

"I think we're working well together. When one of us is low, the other one slashes high and gets the ball and looks right down low immediately. That's the first look that we're thinking and I don't know, we've just been clicking on the court."

On preseason thoughts about post ability:

"The three of us have great size and strength, so with the three of us in there, we're just big and long both on defense blocking shots and getting rebounds and then throwing it up court to get our offense started."

Junior Forward Kiah Stokes

On offensive performance:

"It was pretty good, it can always be better. I missed a couple shots and I should've got more rebounds tonight than I did but baby steps because you are good one day, but you need to keep improving the next. You get better in practice and are able to get ready for the next game."

On what part of stat line she likes the most:

"I like blocks and rebounds the best since we have a lot of scorers. If I can score, that's great of course because I know that's what coach wants me to do. But I know I can block shots really well and if I can get blocks every game, that's what I want to do along with rebounds."

Sophomore Guard Moriah Jefferson

On what you take away from last three games:

"I like that we're all on the same page, everyone is playing good. It's not like there are some people playing bad. The whole team is playing together and that's our strength."

On who has improved most down the stretch:

"It's hard, but I think Kiah and Brianna have both done a great job. Kiah coming in on the offensive end, knocking down shots, grabbing rebounds, and blocking shots is great. Brianna is also coming in hitting threes."

St. Bonaventure head coach Jim Crowley

How did your team approach this game, knowing it wouldn't be easy?

"We try to appoach every game to focus on us, to focus on our effort, our execution, all that stuff. We certainly looked at it as doing that, but also as a chance to go against the best. For me, the most impressive thing they do is they just play the game so hard, all of them, every minute. That's a great learning thing for our crew, especially being younger. We looked at it as a chance to play against that high level of a team and to get better ourselves some way."

In what way did your team benefited from the experience of playing the No. 1 team in the country?

"You play in this environment, you play against a team that is that talented, but their main focus is their effort. And then their second focus is playing together, and the third is their execution, and they do them all well. I think that's a great benefit for us to say 'Hey, we were able to play hard.' Did we have success? Not a lot, but we were able to play hard. If we're able to play that hard against teams that aren't No. 1 in the country then good things can happen."

What did you see from your team that you liked?

"We kept fighting. I really was proud that until the end we kept going hard. We had a couple stretches where we hung our heads and allowed too many easy scores, but I thought for the most part we really tried to do a lot of the things that we work on and we do. Sometimes their ability scored over that, but when we did it we were able to get some good shots that maybe didn't fall or might have been contested more than they normally would. I thought we were able to see that our stuff can work, especially against teams that aren't at this level."

University of Connecticut Athletics

Players Mentioned

Stefanie Dolson

Moriah Jefferson

Kiah Stokes

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