ETSU Bucs

Coach Brittney Ezell

Opening statement
“First of all, I want to congratulate Western for a really good year and three really good games against us. Our kids dreaded preparing for them; they are a tough matchup. Karen (Middleton) did a tremendous job with her group. The game was a tale of two halves. Our kids showed a lot of resiliency. They played with a lot of heart. I think the catalyst was Maria Bond and Tianna (Tarter), who missed the last game.”

On 37 points in 14 minutes in second half
“Is that what we had? I think we changed defenses so much that they got tired on the offensive end. They are really good when they get into a rhythm and I think we took that away. I thought our transition game was good and we were unselfish around the basket. We had good interior passes and kicking out when we were in scramble situations. Down the stretch, we hit a lot of open shots.”

Senior Maria Bond

On mindset
“I’m a senior, this is my last year and you have one time to do it, so why not this year?”

Western Carolina Catamounts

Coach Karen Middleton

Opening statement
“ETSU had a great spurt in the second half, and they have so many shooters. They did a great job of having really good balance. I thought we did a good job of being aggressive in the first half. We got them into a little bit of foul trouble. They had a little too much, and hats off to them, they played really well. They’re a team that’s very dangerous and is capable of putting up a lot of points.”

On ETSU’s second-half run
“They were setting aggressive ball screens. They hit a stretch of where they hit two or three 3s, and that gave them momentum and really big confidence and it balanced over to the defensive end for them. We just couldn’t knock down our free throws. They are a really good team that can score from every position.”

Senior Justin Taylor

On ETSU’s run
“It’s the trick of the trade, you win some, you lose some. Like coach said, they caught fire. When you get two or three 3-pointers hit on you, you go in a hole a little bit. I felt like we went down a little bit. They had a little more fire than we did in the second half. They outplayed us in the second half and did a little bit more as a whole than we did.”