March 20, 2005

Women's 2005 Basketball Championships Game 3 Post-Game Quotes Univ. of Texas at Arlington

Head Coach Donna Capps

Opening Statement:

"I feel like our team represented the university and conference well. We were extremely pleased with our performance during the first-half of play. We worked hard to keep our turnovers to five and we forced twelve on the opponents. I really feel like our quickness was to our advantage, of course, they weren't allowing our guards to touch the ball and that is how we stayed in most of our conference games with our three-point shot and they definitely took that away from us. The momentum changed just a little bit. The type of play was a quite a bit different in the second half, it was much more difficult. When the play became more difficult, it was to Tech's advantage. The post play inside got loose several times. But all-in-all, this has been a terrific season for UTA, we have made history in so many ways. I wanted the two young ladies (Rola Ogunoye and Krystal Buchanan) to my right to come in because they are the ones that the program has been built around. They are actually the foundation of the program and have given so much to themselves. I am very pleased with their performance for four years."

On Tech's advantage over UTA:

"I think the experience was tremendous, but I think the strength inside was even more. They had us outsized quite a bit. Our quickness gave us the leverage in the first half, and then they adjusted. They hit us with a very forceful power."

Are you proud of how your team played?

"Tremendously, it would have been easy for our group as the underdog to tie down, but they didn't. I felt like they were taking it to them, even though we were down at the very end. Somehow, I don't feel the score was indicative of all that they gave on the court. "

On where UTA is now compared to four years ago when they played Tech:

"The first year I would have really rather been under my chair than sitting in it. I really felt like we went toe-to-toe with them in the first half. What a great stride for the program and the university."

Senior Forward Rola Ogunoye

On coming out and playing like they had nothing to lose:

"Basically, that is what we wanted to do. Everybody considered us the underdogs and we knew we couldn't come out slow. We knew we had to come out hard and aggressive to prove our point and I think that is what we did."

On Tech's second half play and LaToya Davis's play:

"The guards were so tight on each other it was basically the posts in the second half. They (Texas Tech) came out really, really fast. They changed the momentum. It was just something that we were trying to adjust to and we didn't adjust correctly."

Senior Guard Krystal Buchanan

On the new experience this week.

"We didn't know what to expect. Getting here was just a joy. It is a dream when you are a little kid playing ball to get to the NCAA tournament. Basically we were just excited from all the treatment and all the fans, all of the publicity and just getting acknowledged. UTA is not that big of a school but we put ourselves on the map. We just want to thank all of the fans that came out, we haven't seen that many fans in a long time.