Xavier vs. Nebraska Post Game Quotes

March 23, 2008

Head Coach Kevin McGuff

Opening Statement:

"I want to congratulate Nebraska on their victory; they played an excellent game and certainly played harder and competed more towards 40 minutes than we did today.  We did a lot of very positive things this season and I think at the end of the game we finally found a sense of urgency and just wish we would have found that earlier."

on Xavier's tough start, falling behind 13-2:

"I don't know what it was, but we weren't playing at the level that we have played at recently ... Our intensity wasn't what it should have been ... Certainly defensively, we weren't doing what we had practiced and against a really talented Nebraska team you can't do that.  To their credit, they took advantage of us not really being in sync to start the game."

on next year, not having a senior and what it means heading into next season:

"You know, its certainly exciting to think about the possibilities of having everybody back.  I hope we can take today and use it as a real learning experience ... Like any team, we need to have a big off-season but with such young talent, I know I'm going to really challenge and push our team during the off-season to make sure that given an opportunity to get back to the NCAA Tournament, we show up and put our best foot forward."

on Ta'Shia's absence and what that meant to the team:

"Ta'Shia is a big part of what we do on both ends of the floor.  She's such a physical presence around the paint, so certainly her foul trouble hurt us but I think we could have overcome it had we played more as a team and with more energy to start the game ... I looked at the last seven minutes and kind of how we played and think that's some what reflective of what we've done recently and unfortunately we just couldn't do that for 40 minutes."

 

Ta'Shia Phillips

on her early foul trouble and how it played into the game:

"Just coming in here, Coach told us to be aggressive and that's what we were trying to do and with foul trouble it kind of makes things a little bit harder to do ... the inside out game or getting defensive stops and rebounds but we did our best with what we had."

Amber Harris

on what Nebraska did on defense in the first half:

"I really just couldn't find my shot.  I think they were just trying to double team down on me and try to disrupt my shot."

Jerri Taylor

when asked did they do anything that surprised you:

"They really didn't do anything that surprised me.  We knew that Nebraska was a good team but we just did not come out and play our game today.  Ta'Shia is one of our leading scorers, so when she got into foul trouble I think that hurt us a lot in the beginning but outside of that, we just didn't have enough fight in us at the beginning of the game ... but we did towards the end of the game.  I felt like this was the team that would advance in the tournament this year ... I felt like we played hard throughout the year we everybody ... With two transfers, I felt like we finally jelled together, so that was a surprise."

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Players Mentioned

Amber Harris

Ta'Shia Phillips

Jerri Taylor

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