Oklahoma won the first matchup of the 2009-10 season with the 77-66 victory in Stillwater over their bedlam rivals, Oklahoma State. After the game, both teams took time to talk about their play and the game. Here are some notes and quotes from the stat sheet and the speakers:
Head Coach Sherri Coale, Danielle Robinson, Abi Olajuwon and Amanda Thompson post-game interviews:
Sherri Coale on Danielle Robinson’s play – If you’ll just indulge me for a second, I don’t know that I’ve seen a finer individual performance from a point guard than what you saw from Danielle today. And I know the numbers are gaudy and speak for themselves, but it was her leadership. It was the way she ran our team, it was the decisions she made throughout the game, it was her cool head. That’s what great point guards do, so when you want to talk about who’s the best in the country, I think you’ve got to include her because today she was just phenomenal.
For OSU, the team was led by Riley and Cunningham, as has been the case for the majority of this season, but the downfall was no one else stepped up for the Cowgirls. As previously noted, Oklahoma State was outrebounded 49 to 31, gave up 30 points in the paint, 13 fast break points and shot 37.1 percent from the field in the tough home loss.
Andrea Riley and Tegan Cunningham post game conference audio:
Andrea Riley on Oklahoma’s performance - They outworked us, they outplayed us and that’s why they won.
Head coach Kurt Budke spoke on the loss and his team’s performance:
Kurt Budke on the loss - I thought they executed like a more experienced team than we did. I thought the point guards would kind of cancel each other out and I think that’s kind of what happened. It just came down to the boards. You can not win in this league giving up 20 offensive rebounds.
Budke on Big 12 leader Nebraska – If they stay healthy they’re not going to be caught, I don’t think. That’s a really special team up there.