Pittsburgh Postgame Quotes
No. 12 Pittsburgh vs. No. 13 USF
Game 1 – First Round, March 4, 2011
XL Center – Hartford, Conn.
Head Coach Agnus Berenato
Opening Statement:
“I am really proud of my team. We really wanted to be here tomorrow. We felt that today would give us tomorrow and that was really important! I thought that we shot the ball extremely well at 55 percent. We were out rebounded in the first half and we wanted to tie up the rebounds. I thought we had some great plays. Chelsea Cole did a good job on the boards and that Jania (Sims), who, honestly had two and three people on her all the time, it was like a kamikaze defense, just throwing players at whoever had the ball. I thought that Leeza Burdgess really stepped up huge for us. She came in as a freshman and the first half she really gave us a lot of confidence and she was in for Chelsea – she shot 100 percent, had 3 rebounds and 10 points. Defensively, she was fabulous in the paint or in man-to-man. We are just really excited to have the opportunity to stay here in Hartford; we like your City. We weren’t willing to go home. We are not leaving; we are not getting on that bus! We had a lot of reasons to win this game. We are not leaving today. USF, unbelievable game – Big East is about competition and that’s what it was like today. Great competition from top to bottom in the Big East.”
Senior Forward – Chelsea Cole
The last play at the end, was that your first look when you inbounded?
“We had a lot of opportunities to score at the end, but that was what was open.”
Senior Guard – Jania Sims
When the score was 40 – 25 … and they hit some threes – were you optimistic and not going to just give up?
“I mean, USF is a really good team and there isn’t going to be any blow outs. Coach said that if we play our game we would prevail. And we did.”
USF Quotes
No. 12 Pittsburgh vs. No. 13 USF
Game 1 – First Round, March 4, 2011
XL Center – Hartford, Conn.
Head Coach Jose Fernandez
Opening Statement:
“I’m just really proud of the effort of our guys at the end of the game. You get down 15 at the second half and I thought those first 18, 19 minutes of the game, when your best player gets hurt, we were kind of in a fog offensively. When you have 11 of your 13 players returning, I think they showed a lot of fight and effort, where we put ourselves in a position to win the game in the last minute and a half, two minutes. That’s kind of been the story with us all year if you look at how many single-digit games we’ve had and how many games mirror this type of game at the end of the year. I thought we closed out our last three or four games of our season at Rutgers, winning at Villanova, Georgetown and at home and even here in the first round being short-handed, I see how our kids battled and competed down the stretch.”
How did your team have to change once Andrea Smith got injured?
“A lot of things that we run offensively run through her, but I think we got a lot of the three’s through transition and in the flow. It’s hard to be an up-tempo team and press if the ball is not going through the hole and we had, I believe, 16 turnovers in the first half and that’s uncharacteristic for us; we only average 13 or 14 a game. Then we take care of it in the second half, only having 4 turnovers in the next 20 minutes. We started pressing on misses and dead ball situations it sped us up and got us to play with some momentum…that’s how we like to play, but it’s tough to play without a player who is all conference. She is a big part of what we do.”