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Opening statement:
Stone: “We ended our home stand last night and
unfortunately lost Stephanie Rich with an injured hand and we’ll address that
question in a second, but looking forward to the conference tournament. We’re
playing a team (Indiana) who we just played a week ago. We’re familiar with
Coach Bennett’s coaching style and the scouting reports and the practice plan
going up to it will be pretty fresh in our minds. We’re looking forward to the
challenge. We’ve faced adversity throughout the year so we’ll do it again and
rise up and hopefully win games in the tournament and move on.”
Lisa you lost Shawna before the season started and
you lost Lello (Gebisa) for a time and you lost Kjersten (Bakke); you’ve had
injuries, but when you lose your quarterback does it makes you change the way
you approach things. Can you talk about how you’ll have to change up Thursday?
Stone: “We’re going to be very innovative. We were up
till’ about two-thirty in the morning last night trying to come up with a plan
and rotation. Steph will help us out. She’ll help whoever’s going to lead the
charge. Ashley runs a little bit of point, and she will have to. Kandace is
going to have to run a little bit of point, and we may have to move Jordan Wilson out to a three-spot, we may have to come up with some things defensively,
but against Indiana’s pressure defense its imperative that our players make good
decisions with the basketball; that we find good passing angles; that we find
ways to score. We did not do a good job of that down there. We did a nice job of
that here, obviously, at our place, but that was in large part to Bakke and
Steph. So we’re going to have to fill that void someway and my staff and I will
work as hard as we can to prepare our team. It’s tournament time and a lot of
crazy things happen in March and I’m hoping that the craziness we come up with
on Thursday will provide us with a win.”
You mentioned the innovation, what about
defensively against Indiana, what are the keys going to be and I don’t know how
much that changes with Stephanie out.
Stone: “They’re guard-oriented. They’ve got Cyndi
Valentin, who I believe ran 40-straight free throws. She’s a great free throw
shooter and they get to the free throw line. Jenny DeMuth has taken 223 free
throws this season. She gets to the free throw line, had 14 against us a week
ago. That’s the match-up. We match up very well inside. They have DeMuth and
Valentin outside. Ashley, I think her match-up will stay the same. We can put
Ebba on DeMuth, they played on the same AAU (team). There are some similarities,
we know she’s going to drive baseline. In some ways when you play a team so
close together there’s and advantage to that. You know what they’re going to do.
We’ve got to keep them off the free throw line and we’ve got to rebound. They’ll
push the ball in transition. We’ve got to contest high and hard. We have to
rebound. We’ll have a size advantage, and rebounding obviously is going to be a
very key stat for us.
Stephanie can you talk about exactly what it is
that happened to you and how frustrating it is to have this happen right at the
end of the season after a really in a way a long season?
Rich: “I was just trying to poke at the ball when she (OSU
player) just had the ball over her head looking into the post. But her elbow
came down on my fingers and I could just feel it right away. It’s frustrating,
but like coach said, I'm glad it happened in the last game of the season rather
than two months ago. But I’m really disappointed that I can't play in the Big
Ten tournament against an Indiana team that we played so well against just a
week ago. I believe in the girls and they’re going to rise up and do everything
they can to come up with a win. And the coaches will work just as hard.”
So Stephanie what exactly is the injury, I mean
how much recovery time would you expect?
Rich: “It’ll probably be just six weeks, that’s what Dr.
Graph (orthopedist) said today. It’s just a fracture of my right hand. I’ve got
two fingers I can use.”
How would you expect your teammates to respond?
Rich: “Kandace is obviously going to have to step in and
just be a calming factor as much as she can. I know she hasn’t been playing as
many minutes these last few games, but I think once she gets on the floor and
realizes she has to play more than 20 minutes a game then she will have to just
relax and take care of the ball…I think this is a big learning tool for her as
well, into her freshman season and going into next season for her. It’ll be huge
for her to have the team on her back kind of and just try to lead them as much
as possible. And Ashley will step in and do everything she can as well, like she
has all season.”
Stephanie, as Lisa said earlier, you can still
help the team out, even though you’re not going to be on the court. What ways
are you looking forward to be able to help them in other ways that you haven’t
done in the past now with an eye on the bench?
Rich:
“Yeah, I hope to be in Coach Stone’s shoes someday down the road and this is
just a good opportunity to see how it goes from the sideline. I haven’t been
able to watch a game from the bench in a long time, so I think even being more
of a leader on the bench will help and Kandace and I have a really good
relationship. Anything I can do to help her calm down on the court or anything
(I’ll do), she asks a lot of questions. Ashley running the point, she hasn’t run
that for a while so I’m not an expert at the point guard, but anything I can do
to help them I’ll try to do.”
Coach, like it wasn’t tough enough to deal with a
loss from last night's game but then you have to deal with this then as well, do
you have that moment or two when you say when you hear about Stephanie’s injury,
what next, what else could possibly happen?
Stone: “I'm not a big woe is me (person) and I’m not a
person to make excuses. You’re taking a player out of our lineup that’s been
averaging 40 minutes the whole year and that’s obviously tough for us, but what
I try to do is stay positive with our team. Again, my glass is still half-full
and I’m positive and its an opportunity for us to dig down deep and rally. We
have 10 bodies…we’ll take 10 bodies in uniform and go after Indiana. Instead of,
‘oh no what’s next’, and ‘oh boy this is too bad’…I tell Steph Rich on a
positive note that this (injury) is better now than in December…when we’re going
the whole year trying to fill this void. We’re going to miss Steph immensely,
but she will provide the communication to our teammates. She and Bakke, the two
of them, and when those two speak people are going to listen. They’ll back us up
and we’ll go rally and dig down. You can’t cry over spilled milk. We have to
rally behind it and stay positive and keep battling and finish the season off on
a strong note sending us in again to spring workouts and into next season.”