Mel Thomas Quotations

Whenever we play good defense, it creates our offense.

She's leading us. She's doing everything and she's playing very aggressively. We're just following her.

She keeps us busy. She doesn't want us sitting around getting sluggish.

I guarantee no one expected them to come this far.

It can be a little more difficult. You want to say that it's not but I think that we'll be ready. It's a championship. We want to win a championship and Rutgers just happens to be -- I mean, West Virginia just happens to be the opponent.

I think we needed that. We were just playing with them the whole game, we had to break away at some point.

I think CD is like the glue that keeps it all together. She?s the one that makes sure everybody listens and does everything right. She keeps coach in check, she?s the one that keeps everything organized. She?s like our mom. Without her, I think we would be lost.

I think shooters just go up and down. (Strother) hasn't been shooting well the past couple of games, but she'll come out of it. It's just a matter of time. It's Ann. She's a great shooter; I'm not worried about her at all.

I think coach always challenges you when you're not doing well and I think she just took the challenge and came out and played really well. When Renee plays well it just carries our whole team, and especially when she gets after it defensively and she pushes the ball it just brings our team to a whole other level.

When we're playing well together we just want to keep getting the ball. You just keep feeding off it. We learned how well we can play, we just can't settle for anything less in the future.

We definitely know it's another chance. We lost the regular season, but coming out in the (Big East) tournament, we have another chance to show what we're made of.

We just have to play 20 minutes and follow it up with another 20 minutes in the second half.

We just take it personally. This girl is the leading scorer in the country and you don't want her to score. Everywhere she goes, that's all we were thinking: She's not getting the ball.

Brittany's presence is really important to us because she's another scoring option in the lane. Being able to kick it in to her and having people double is opening it up for all of us. Or if she can score, that's an option, too.

Early in the year she had a hard time knowing when to shoot and when to kick it out. As practice has gone on, I think she's realizing what she needs to do and where to see the openings when it's her shot. I have trust in her, but it's gotten a lot more since the beginning of the season. So I guess it's true that's she's building it up. It's not a conscious thing I think about, but I definitely feel I trust her more than the beginning of the season.

There will be times when we won?t score for 10 minutes and some teams may freak out because that?s not really happened to them before. Unfortunately -- or fortunately, I?m not really sure -- it?s happened to us, so we know how to react to it.

Coach was not happy with us. He told us we just need to flush this (game) down the toilet and forget about it.

It?s getting better every day. I?m just excited to go out and play again.

That's one thing I've tried to learn from her. She might get frustrated, but she never shows it.

Taking her out of her game makes their team struggle a lot more.

It took a little longer than I thought it would to see initial results. But now it's getting better every day and I can notice the difference. I'm just excited to go out there and play again.

They came out and played really hard. They definitely outworked us on the boards.

I just came out ready to shoot. I just found myself open a lot and I just came in knowing that I needed to contribute. It was nice. My confidence hasn't been down or anything, but it's always good to have good nights. It helps a lot.

I love it when they can come. They're all Cincinnati fans, so it's pretty interesting.

I just tried real hard all summer. I wanted to improve a lot, and I guess other people noticed it as well.