Gail Goestenkors Playing Quotations

That's the great thing about our team. We have tremendous depth. It depends on the day who is playing well for us.

The fact that they are playing with great freedom -- they seem to have a chip on their shoulder while they've been here, talking about respect. I don't think that anyone now could possibly not respect them. It would be interesting to see if they can still say that because, in my mind, they've beaten the No. 1 team (North Carolina) in the country twice so I see them right now as the No. 1 team in the country.

We like to play an up-tempo game. It's an exciting brand of basketball, and our players enjoy playing it.

Initially, when we had our first sellout against Connecticut, our kids were not prepared to handle that. The Connecticut players were because they were used to playing in sellout environments.

I was just a little worried about fatigue and playing this 11 a.m. game. I was really proud of the team. I thought it took us a little while to get going, but once we hit our stride, I thought we had a nice inside-outside game going.

I've been trying to get back home with my team. It's kind of ironic that we both tried hard to schedule a game this year during the season and unfortunately the dates did not work out and we're now playing each other in the NCAA Tournament.

At that point, I felt that Maryland was shooting lights out. They were playing great basketball. So I felt like - I was hoping - they wouldn't be able to shoot that way for the entire game. We just needed to crank our defense up a notch.

It's like playing in the NCAA Tournament. It forces your players to adapt to the time, the distance, the arena and the crowd. It's a great experience.

I think we've gotten back to playing the way we want to play, and that's hard, aggressive defense.

We were really trying to get a game with Michigan State this year. Both schools worked really hard to make this happen. Both schools wanted a home-and-home. The dates just didn't work out. I'm happy to be playing Michigan State. I wish it was in the state of Michigan.

We just weren't playing with the effort, the intensity, the desire, the passion that I think we're known for and that we've come to expect from our basketball team.

Years ago, players were willing to come in and sit on the bench for one or two years and work their way into the lineup. And now so many players come in and they want to start right away. They definitely want to make an impact right away. When you have 15 available scholarships it's not possible to have 15 players playing major minutes right away.