I think what hurt us tonight was our defense. They really exploited us with the dribble and our turnovers. You're not going to beat anyone with turnovers.
We practiced against their full-court pressure. We knew that if we got the ball to the middle we could break their press, but we had too many mental lapses in the first quarter and we couldn't get back in the game after that.
That's a good basketball team right there. They wouldn't let us do what we wanted to do and that was pretty much the ball game.
I like our chances with them. They work the high-low game very well. They have a good combination underneath and those big girls compliment each other very well. Their point guard is the key, though.
They executed better than us. Mentally, toughness is what cost us today. Sometimes due to mental lapses in the game we just don't think and made poor errors and bad fundamentals.
This game takes nothing away from our season. We deserved to be in the quarterfinals. To get to the semifinals, you have to be mentally tough, but we didn't have it tonight.
You go through phases during the game where you can't get it in. The first half was our phase. I thought we had good looks, we were short, that's basketball. I thought we had no continuity the whole game. We couldn't get into a rhythm of what we were trying to do.
We're working on our defense. We've got rebounds, toughness and self-respect are the four things we have to work on down the stretch.
