CU-Florida Quotes

Colorado Head Coach Linda Lappe

General

"Well that was a tough game for us. I'm obviously disappointed in the loss, but you have to give Florida a lot of credit they came out and played really hard tonight. I thought in the second half they made all the little and big plays. They built a lead that we couldn't come back from, and they're going to have a really good season. We're disappointed that we didn't show up a little better on our home floor. The good thing is there's another game ahead of us to fix this, and we definitely will fix the problems. I know our players will persevere and get back at it and do what it takes to get through the process."

On battling back during the game

"We came back much sooner than we did against Kentucky and we fought earlier than the Kentucky game. In that game we didn't start fighting until the second half. In this game we started early in the second quarter, and really just made plays. That was a really big positive, we did exert a lot of energy coming back. But we made plays and came back. Obviously you want to take that momentum and move that forward. But we didn't make enough plays to do that. I do see a lot of positives, and a lot of progress from the Kentucky game. But it's never fast enough for our players and our coaching staff. We've got to continue to build on that and be smarter in situations. Again we had way too many turnovers that lead to transition baskets on their end. I think we needed a few more rebounds in the second half, they had a few too many offensive rebounds and that really hurt us as well."

On Florida's physical play

"No I didn't think their physicality affected us. I thought we did a nice job of stepping in there and taking charges. I thought we had great position which is something that we talked about, we haven't taken a lot of charges up to this point. We wanted to really make sure we were good on help side since we knew they were going to come barreling at us, and really drive the ball to the basket. I thought our guards did a nice job of not fouling, and overall we did a nice job of not fouling to allow that post to come over and take that charge. Rebound wise, I felt like a lot of the times it was positioning that didn't allow us to get those defensive rebounds."

On Florida's depth

"They do have great depth. They play a lot of players and keep bringing them off the bench. But it's not an excuse for us, it's just something we need to figure out, coming back on back-to-back nights and play well. We just need to be a little bit smarter; a lot of times we would come down off of a quick, fast shot and then be sprinting back on defense again so we never made them play defense. So there's a lot of different ways we could have been a little bit smarter when maximizing our possessions, in order to limit their possessions. Obviously they played a lot of players, and ultimately they played harder in the second half. Who knows why that happened, but I thought that was a huge part."

On moving forward

"For us it's just about being smarter when we play. I mean we're really young and with a young team they don't really know how to maximize possessions and value the basketball. We can run and gun all we want, but if we're taking bad shots it's not something we really want. We need to take care of the basketball better, make better passes and move the gaps a little bit better. I thought we did some nice things defensively tonight, I thought they scored a lot because of turnovers and fast break baskets."

On Zoe Beard-Fails' return

"We're not sure on how long she will be out, just trying to take it day by day."

Colorado Players

Haley Smith, Jr., G/F

On Offense's Slow Start

"I think, especially early on, we were having trouble with the flow of our offense. We weren't really taking shots that we practice, ones that come out of the offense. Once we were able to correct that late in the first quarter and work more on the flow and run our offense and get shots out of that, I think we did a lot better. We weren't really flowing together."

Kennedy Leonard, Fr., G

On Playing From Behind for Most of the Game

"It makes you exert a lot of effort. We shouldn't be down to a team like that by 10. Once you're down that much, it's really hard to get back. It all depends on how we start the game. We have to start the game faster to be better. We're going to go back and practice; we're going to come in mad on Monday and get ready for our next game on Wednesday."

Colorado University Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Zoe Beard-Fails

Kennedy Leonard

Haley Smith

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