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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE


December 6, 2015


Lisa Bluder


Iowa City, Iowa

Iowa - 69, Robert Morris 50

COACH BLUDER: Well, a little slow start today, to say the least. Disappointed with that.

Robert Morris came out in a very good zone defense and ironically, they had only played that zone defense 15 percent of the time the whole year leading up to this game. We thought they might play it, we didn't think they would play it for 40 minutes. And I think it's a good zone. I think they do a nice job with their zone defense.

We kind of played into that the first half. We didn't get high percentage shots, so we weren't shooting well from three.

Second half, we did a much better job of getting higher percentage shots and our shooting percentage went up.

But I will say, I thought our defense was very good. This is a team that averages 75 points a game. Held them to 50, so 25 points below their average.

I think Tania came in and was a great spark off the bench for us. I thought Whitney's defense was very good as well. I think Megan came in off the bench well for us. When our bench outscores theirs 33-10, that is significant. We're really happy about that.

Q. What do you think the difference was that second half?
COACH BLUDER: I think it was really getting higher percentage shots. I thought we were settling for the three in the first half.

In the second half, I know we shot about the same amount. We shot 10 the first half and nine the second half. But we got much better looks in the second half going inside to cutters, to Megan, to going inside and getting those higher percentage shots. So, I think we have to do that, especially against a zone that spreads out as much as theirs does.

Q. Seemed like Robert Morris slowed down toward the end of the game. How big a role did your conditioning play in this game against Robert Morris?
COACH BLUDER: I thought we were in better shape, and I think that shows with the fast break. We were 19-5 fast-break points. Those are high percentage points. We want to push the ball and we were able to do it as the game went on.

Q. What did you tell the team at halftime?
COACH BLUDER: Basically, work on getting higher percentage shots, continue to push every time we had the opportunity. Those were really our two main offensive focuses.

Q. What goes through the mind when you're down 10 points and coming back and that?
COACH BLUDER: Well, we're disappointed in it, but we also know there's plenty of time. It's not a one quarter game, it's a four quarter game. So, I don't feel like we panicked, I don't feel like anybody went crazy or anything, we just thought we're going to start chipping away at this. We're unhappy about it, but we're going to start chipping away with it. They hit two threes right off the bat and then they slowed down, too. So percentages usually do even out throughout the game.

Q. Seems like you've been on the go the past couple weeks, now you have a decent amount of time to prepare for one of the biggest games of the year at Iowa State. Talk about that.
COACH BLUDER: We'll have a day off tomorrow and that will be really nice for the players to have a day off of basketball. Then we have three days to prepare for them. Usually you only have two days. We know the importance of this game, we know the environment that we're going to be going into and our young team has to be ready to get ready for that type of environment heading on the road again.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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