Nebraska Coach Connie Yori Quotes

#16 Nebraska 94, #8 Penn State 74
Monday, Feb. 24, 2014
Pinnacle Bank Arena (Lincoln, Neb.)

Head Coach Connie Yori
Opening Statement
“I made the really brazen comment before the game that in order for us to win today, we had to make some perimeter shots. It’s pretty obvious that that’s what happened. Our players didn’t need coaching tonight. They just needed to go out and play. If you hit shots like that, it just makes the game easy. (Tear’a Laudermill) hitting those shots really changed our spacing. It allowed us to then drive the ball. It allowed us then to be a cutting team. (Laudermill) I thought was really big. You don’t expect Jordan (Hooper) to make shots every night and Rachel (Theriot), but you expect them to make them more often. I think (Laudermill) making the shots tonight really set up our offense for other things to happen. That allowed Emily (Cady) to drive the ball in the second half. We couldn’t have played a lot better offensively than we did in the first half.”

On if she’s ever been apart of that
“I’ve coached a lot of games. And I can’t tell you I’ve ever coached a team that was 16-for-22 from the three-point line. I’ve coached games where you’re shooting it really well. Number two on the all-time list? That’s a lot of made threes on 22 shots. 48 points on 22 shots. I was not a math major, but yet I can still come up with that figure. It’s just one of those days. Shooting is that way. You get it going and you feel it. The rim becomes like a big barrel. You see that with teams. Last year we saw it with Maggie (Lucas) here. She’s also a shooter that you can expect to do that a little more. She got it going last year and it didn’t really matter at times what we did. She just had it going.”

On Maggie Lucas
“For her size, my gosh. It’s phenomenal what she does really. A kid that’s 5-8 and has decent quickness, but she’s obviously not the quickest one out there. For her to have the skill level that she has is just a great credit to her and how much time she’s spent in the gym. You just don’t see kids of that size be able to fill it up like that. It’s pretty impressive what she can do. We knew going in there were certain things we had to take away this game. Obviously we had to do a better job on her than we did last year. Your game plan starts with Maggie Lucas.”

On Sample and Laudermill’s defensive performance on Lucas
“They did a really good job. It was collective. They are going to run her off a lot of screens. She’s going to get ball screens. You have to do a good job collectively of guarding her. Hailie (Sample) is – I’m going to put Hailie on the ballot for defensive player of the year, or on the all-defensive team. She won’t probably make the team because everyone thinks that steals and making the big play is defense. I’m not saying it’s not, but also you as a defender, you have to be able to stay in front of somebody, you have to be able to challenge shots and you have to make your opponent shoot tough shots. And that’s what Hailie does. (Laudermill) did a good job on her as well. Collectively we did a good job of hedging. We did a pretty good job on her collectively. It starts with the kid that defends her – she has to start it.”

On the team’s focus
“Our chemistry is great. Our kids just really like each other. I knew when we weren’t playing well – I wasn’t worried about us going in the tank. I think we have too many good kids. I think we have too many good character kids that aren’t going to take us down the wrong path. I didn’t necessarily think we’d win eight in a row, but I didn’t expect us to tank it either because we have good character kids in our program. I think that’s why you can keep playing and not get super worried about it. You don’t have a turd or two. We don’t have that.”