Feb. 15, 2007

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TENNESSEE HEAD COACH Pat Summitt:

(opening remarks)
"We knew going in that this was not going to be an easy 40 minutes of basketball. I thought Ole Miss did a great job of staying aggressive. Even with (Armintie) Price in foul trouble, they were able to maintain their intensity up until halftime. In the second half, we had some good runs. Our defense stepped up. Our zone slowed their attack. It took them longer to find their shots. We did a good job out of our match-up zone. It was good to us."

(on going with a zone defense in the second half against Ole Miss)
"After watching tape, we felt like they were more confident and more fluid in their man-to-man offense than their zone offense. We're more confident in our man-to-man defense. We thought that was what turned around the Kentucky game when they went to the zone in the second half. The Arkansas game was the same thing. We were mindful that we wanted a different look. They handled our man-to-man defense better than just about anyone has in the conference this season."

"Going into the second half, we wanted to keep the lead. We wanted to get them shooting later in the clock. In the first half, they were shooting early, in the first 10 seconds of the clock. We got them shooting under 10 seconds several times in the second half."

(on injuries)
"Cait (McMahan) has an elbow strain. We look like the walking wounded. Alex (Fuller) got hit above her right eye. It's the same eye that was injured against Vanderbilt."

(on rebounding)
"We've put a lot of emphasis on rebounding. We've got to get better. Alberta (Auguste) has got to be better. (Alex) Fuller did a good job for the number of minutes that she played. (Nicky) Anosike stepped up. We're getting better in that area. We're more focused on it."

(on upcoming game against LSU)
"LSU is big for us. We've dropped a couple of games to them. They've had the upperhand against us the last couple of years. We won last year at the tournament, but in the regular season, we couldn't find a way to beat them. The way we look at it, the SEC Championship is on the line, and a No. 1 seed (NCAA Tournament) is on the line. We'll take a couple of days to get healthy and ready to play. They have a great presence in the middle with (Sylvia) Fowles. I'm anxious to see how we match up with them inside. I like the way we match up with them on the perimeter. I'm excited. It should be a great test on the road, one of the largest for us in conference play."

(on Alexis Hornbuckle)
"Alexis stepped up in the second half. We said at halftime that she had to get more involved offensively. We said that she had to get to the paint, and she responded. We needed her."

(on Candace Parker)
"I thought Candace did a nice job once she was able to get inside. At the beginning of the game, we all wanted to be guards again. Once we established our inside game, she did a great job for us. She did a good job on defense, rebounding, ball-handling, and decision making."

JUNIOR GUARD Alexis Hornbuckle

On playing zone defense tonight:
"Naturally, our man-to-man defense is our first option. But they were penetrating so much and so easily at times that Coach (Summitt) put us in zone. I think we handled it really well. It was hard for them to penetrate. They got a lot more open jump shots, but we shut down their penetration."

On Mississippi's aggressiveness on offense:
"Well, they came at us. They were very aggressive. At times, we weren't in a stance or we weren't over in help. It's just a matter of they came out with more intensity than we did. You can't match that. We are two very athletic teams, but if we're not in a stance or we're not ready to defend, they are going to look like the better team."

On her increased number of drives in the second half:
"Coach (Summitt) stressed to me to look for the dribble penetration. They were putting so much pressure on Candace and all their focus was on Candace that we had to penetrate and kick, and I just took advantage of that."

On how a day off helps the team:
"The day of rest helps us tremendously, especially when we had those two key injuries. When you have a hard-fought game like that, you're going to come out with injuries. We don't like them, we don't want them, but sometimes they come up."

JUNIOR GUARD Shannon Bobbitt

On the guards getting on the boards:
"That's what we talked about at halftime. Now we're talking about the rest of the season the guards have to help rebound or we won't be going as far as we want to go. That's why I'm trying to get any loose balls and any long rebounds I can get."

On going against Mississippi's defense:
"They were very aggressive and athletic just like us. I just try to play smart and get the ball up the court as quickly as possible, not to play around with the ball and just try to break down the defense like that, and that's what we did."

SOPHOMORE FORWARD Candace Parker

On getting seven assists:
"They did a good job of knocking down open shots. I feel like if you take something away from this team, we have a lot of counter attacks. If you start taking away the inside, then we try to penetrate and finish. If you take away that, we take outside jump shots. I think we did a good job with the overall game.

On playing against physical and athletic team like Mississippi:
"We knew they were going to come in here and play hard. They are a scrappy team. They get a lot of points off of transition and offensive rebounds. They wouldn't go away, but we did a good job of handling the pressure down the stretch and knocking down open shots."

MISSISSIPPI HEAD COACH CAROL ROSS:

"I could give you any of the (opening statements) I've used here before. It's a disappointing loss. You have to give Tennessee and this environment a lot of credit. It certainly seemed to have affected us. We were not the team that beat LSU or Vanderbilt or any of those other upset losses that we tacked on some of the bigger and better teams in our league. We were a little slow, and Tennessee is talented and good enough to make us pay when we miss our rotations or we're a step slow. That was pretty much it. They scored way too many easy baskets, and we're not going to beat too many teams in our league giving up easy points. We certainly did that, or at least they made them look easy. And the Big Orange rolls on."

(on Armintie Price getting in foul trouble early):
"You can get away with it at home sometimes, and certainly we were able to do that against Alabama, but you can't go on the road and play a team as good as Tennessee and have your best player sitting on the bench. And then she wasn't really very good when she came back out. So it was not her finest hour by any stretch. We don't do a whole lot of good things when she's not doing a whole lot of good things. It's unfortunate to be in a game like this and not get her to play better. She's certainly got the heart for it, she prepared well for the game, but it just wasn't her night. It didn't happen for her."

(on UT playing zone in the second half):
"We see more zone than probably anyone in the country, we're more surprised when we don't see it. Even though Tennessee has not had a history this year of playing much (zone), I told our staff in preparation, 'If they're ever going to play a zone, it will be against us.' It's the defense to guard Ole Miss, I guess, because everybody in the league is running it."

(on keeping it close at halftime):
"I would have felt good at halftime if we'd have gotten on the bus and left. But there were 20 more minutes to play. We knew Armintie had not played much at all, and we did hope that we would come out. Tennessee has a history of closing hard at the half and coming strong out of the locker room after halftime. I was disappointed we didn't come out at halftime and play better and compete harder, and that we didn't challenge them more. They certainly gapped it open. It took all of 90 seconds for a good ballgame to get bad. We didn't do a good job at halftime."

(On Candace Parker):
"She's got to be one of the hardest matchups in our game. We've been out, played people outside the league early, thought we had some tough matchups. But she's just versatile, she does things other players can't do. A great example of that, we were making a little bit of a run, we had the shot clock really low, and they just flipped it inside. She tips it right in, and what goes from a great defensive effort turns into two more points for Tennessee. She affects the game in many ways, her offense gets a lot of attention. She swats a lot of balls out, she affects shots she doesn't block, but she impacts the game in a lot of ways."

(comparing Alexis Hornbuckle and Armintie Price):
"They both do a lot of things to help their team. They're both defensively excellent, they rebound the ball great from the perimeter, they can dribble drive, break down defenders and get in the paint. There are similarities, certainly. I think what separates them is that (Price) is our go-to player and Alexis is not Tennessee's go-to player. She is one of many great players for Tennessee, but that's Parker's job. So I think that's the only separation. I think their physical abilities are very similar."

(On defending Candace Parker):
"We didn't really key on Candace, that was not our game plan. Maybe it should have been because she sure shot a lot. If you play the way we play - we were aware of Candace and we have a lot of respect for her - but if you play Candace, then you're disrespecting the rest of Tennessee's players, and they've got a lot of good players. We weren't doing anything we didn't do against (LSU's Sylvia) Fowles or (Vanderbilt's) Carla Thomas. We just played our regular defense. Again, our defense wasn't as good as it was in those two games, but it wasn't that we were focusing too much on one player. It was just that we weren't playing defensively the way we should have played."

ARMINTIE PRICE:

(on the perimeter speed of both teams):
"I think it's just two aggressive, fast-paced teams trying to create something and get into the paint. Just trying to stay after it and get good looks."

(on sitting most of the first half):
"It was very tough that I wasn't able to help my team on the court, but I was able to cheer for them and try to help them stay in the game. In the second half I knew I had to come out and take over. This time, it just didn't go our way. We've got to be prepared and ready the next time."