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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 30, 2016

Lisa Bluder

Iowa City, Iowa

Notre Dame - 73, Iowa - 58

COACH BLUDER: Well, wish I could take back the first five minutes and the last five minutes, because I thought the middle was pretty good. I thought we fought hard. We fought back from a deficit to make it a good game. We out-rebounded Notre Dame, first time anybody as out-rebounded them all year. Proud of my team for that. You know, we really challenged them in the halftime to hit more o-boards, and we did, so I'm proud of them with that.

But too many turnovers resulted in too many easy points for Notre Dame. We've got to value the ball more. It begins in practice and we have to value the ball more. But Megan, again, had a double-double. Ally plays well for us.

It's just we've got to hit free throws: Shooting 40 percent from the free throw line, you think what a difference mentally that would have made had we had six, seven, eight more free throws, makes it a totally different game at the end.

Q. You talked about the turnovers early, but what led to that?
COACH BLUDER: I wish I knew, Jeff. You know, this has been happening. We have a lot of turnovers in the first half and the second half we get it pretty cleared up. I mean, we had five the second half. It's been happening like this all year. It's like the first half, we're so juiced, I think we're so ready to go; that we're almost not playing calm and collected like you have to do.

But there is no reason for us to have some of our turnovers. I mean, some of them were really unforced turnovers in my opinion, but you know, we'll learn. And you know, I'm going to give the freshmen a break, because they are still learning the offense and they still have to learn how it flows, and it takes a little bit to learn our offense. But some of our veterans are making too many turnovers.

Q. You said that kind of wish you could take back the first five minutes and the last five minutes. Looking at those minutes, what do you think you would change?
COACH BLUDER: Well, just our composure. I mean, you know, we score well in every quarter until the fourth quarter and then we have three field goals but our composure to start the game, you know, in taking care of the ball and doing a better job crashing the boards; we had one rebound offensively in the first half, so doing a better job on that in the first half.

And in the second half, you know, it's really, it came down to a scoring issue. We shot the ball better than Notre Dame, not by much, but we still did. We just didn't get as many opportunities to shoot it. They had 15 more opportunities, I believe, to shoot the ball than we did, 15 more opportunities. I mean, that's turnovers. It's really what it is.

Q. Notre Dame had 42 points in the paint tonight; what do you think you need to tidy up there in the future to shut down the points in the paint?
COACH BLUDER: Yeah, they did a good job of posting up some of our guards. We got out of position. You know, not staying up the floor. I mean, we're not very big, and so we can't get caught behind because people score right over us. And so, it really comes down to positional defense.

The hard part of this time of year, we never get to practice. I mean, all we do is play and travel and prepare for the next opponent, and we never get to practice. I mean, it's really hard to work on your post defense when you're just preparing for the next opponent all the time.

That probably sounds like an excuse, but honestly, we need to practice, and kind of looking forward to the finals break so that we can get some practices in.

Q. You talked so much about good wins and bad losses throughout the year. If there could be a good loss, I suppose, this would be one. When you're thinking of the postseason resumÃ©, when you potentially might be one of those bubble teams, do you think that this game against Notre Dame could help you?
COACH BLUDER: If you win, it helps you. If you lose, I don't think it makes a difference; you lost. You lost. You've got to win. You've got to win some to make it impressive.

Q. You mentioned the rebounding. Is that a highlight for you? What other highlights do you take way interest this?
COACH BLUDER: I would take Megan's double-double, the rebounding aspect; that we cleared up the turnovers in the second half; that we kept fighting. I mean, and I'm proud of my kids for that. And it sounds kind of simple; you know, of course you should fight, right, every second you're on the floor. But some kids don't. Some people don't. When they are down, they don't.

And our kids kept fighting, and I wouldn't expect anything else, but I'm still going to acknowledge it when it's there.

Q. Was it tough to get the long-range shots? A lot of points left on the board that could probably have gone a long way.
COACH BLUDER: Three-point shooting? Yeah, we have to start putting the ball in the hole better from three-point range, because otherwise it clogs up everything in the middle. So we have to start doing it. We've got to find people that are going to do the job for us on the three-point shots.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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