BURN THE HORSE
UALR Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament Notes & Quotes
Round 1 March 19 Wichita, KS
University of Arkansas Little Rock season notes
The big three (Rolfe, Butler, Reed) will graduate as one of the most successful senior class
Chastity Reed was named 2011 Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year – averaged 19.4 p.p.g. and 6.3 rebounds.
Shankia Butler was named Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year.
4-1 record when playing at neutral site, 4-0 when playing on Sunday and 3-1 when playing on a Tuesday.
Played Division II until 1999
Returned 4 starters (Rolfe, Butler, Reed, Kursh)
Records
Reed is the first female or male basketball player to surpass 2,000 career points, (2,183)
Postseason History
First automatic NCAA Tournament bid after winning Sun Belt Conference Tournament title for the first time.
Second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance
Projected Starters
3 Asriel Rolfe 5’6” Senior from Dallas, TX
10 Shanika Butler 5’7” Senior from St. Louis, MO
20 Chastity Reed 6’1” Senior from New Orleans, LA
34 Janette Merriex 5’10” Sophomore from Wichita Falls, TX
54 Marian Kursh 6’0” Junior from Fort Smith, ARK
First Round Locker Room quotes - March 19, 2011 – Wichita, Kan.
Student-Athlete: Janette Merriex
“It’s exciting to be here. Last year we got to see how it actually feels, and just to be back in this atmosphere is a great feeling. We have to be in good position with the ball and help side defense, stay between your man and the ball. I’m not the one standing around, like ‘Oh, I don’t know’ now I can actually do something to also contribute to the team.”
Student-Athlete: Marian Krush
"Individually and as a team we are ready and comfortable, we know what to do and we
kind of know what to expect from being here previous years before."
"It feels great, we've won it three years in a row the first time we got a bid, the
second time we got really, really close and for this time for us to win and actually
getting through was a great experience."
"No we work on what they do and we work on what we need to do to perform and excel
to our best abilities."
First Round Press Conference Quotes - March 19, 2011 – Wichita, Kan.
Student-Athlete: Chastity Reed
“I know what they are going to do on the floor, I’m sure they know what I am going to do on the floor. Ya know we are going to go hard and count on each other for everything.”
“I think it would help us if the game is close, and if not it would make us play hard anyway.”
“I like playing a team like this. You never know where the point is going to come from, it’s not like you have to just key in on one person, so it’s going to be a team effort cause I would rather it be a team effort than just one or two people trying to shut one person down. It’s going to be a good challenge.”
“I guess last year is last year, now we’ve got to move on and play positions like it’s the last one.”
“Usually before a game, I don’t really get antsy about anything, just like to focus on what we been trying to execute during practice and just think about it as much as possible cause there’s not a lot of time to prepare, but we’ve had more time than usual so I feel like we’ve prepared enough.”
team.”
Coach Joe Foley:
“This has brought us so much visibility to our program last year. So many more people are involved in our program in Little Rock, so much pride developing in Little Rock, so to do it back to back, now they know it wasn’t a one shot deal. So I think people are realizing that we have a great program and that we have something to be a part of. You can tell it by how many people we had coming to our games this year. If we increase that again and again, that’s great progress.”
“When you get used to beating people as bad as they’ve been beating them, you don’t get that close at the end of games, sometimes your kids are thinking ‘What’s happening, these guys are playing with u and we are use to blowing people out.’ You know instead of just worrying about executing. When you have been in a lot of close games you don’t get that variety. Our next possession is meaningful but it’s not the end of it so you don’t rush as much.”
“All mid-major programs are in that situation and when you’ve won a lot of games it’s tough. And I’m sure that is where the committee has their biggest problems with strength of schedule, mainly because the big schools won’t play the small teams because they want to maintain their RPI, and we do just the opposite, we try to get into as many hard games in non-conference because our conference play don’t play as hard of games as we do or as Middle Tennessee does.”
“The Last two or three years we have had a lot of juniors and seniors and so I think you can tell a difference in the program. We’ve been going for a while and we’ve got our kids and there and they start becoming juniors and seniors and leaders. Then they can tell the freshman coming in what it’s like playing in this program and what it’s going to be like. And the freshmen accept it a lot better coming from the seniors especially when you’ve had success. It’s hard to build anything until you’ve had success.”
“We are always the underdog, we’ve been the underdog for a while, that’s not a bad role to be in, in this situation. Green Bay is a great program and their coach has done a great job. And I think he realizes like I realize that we both play similar. That this game could get a little ugly. They do a great job defensively and we do a great job defensively, they run motion offense, we run motion offense so it’s going to be two teams who really know a lot about how to play in this particular situation. It’s going to come down to, I think, who gets in foul trouble and who has the hot hand.”
And here's Wisconsin-Green Bay's quotes:
http://www.goshockers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=7500&ATCLID=205119776
BURN THE HORSE Come out to the Jack Stephens Center at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, April 6 to congratulate your men's and women's basketball teams on their success this season and their NCAA Tournament Appearances. Both teams and coaches will be on hand to mix and mingle with fans, answer questions, and talk about the great year for the program.
The New Orleans, La.-native joins Elena Delle Donne of Delaware, Jasmine Thomas of Duke, Kachine Alexander of Iowa, and Maya Moore of Connecticut as the finalists.
