It takes me a little time to get it right . . . but after their win at Missouri, in their final SEC regular season game of the season, Coach Finley said on the radio (mostly exact quotes but, technically, paraphrasing): * * * Just talking about the reaction looking at the box score to see Leilani Correa's rebounds. 17 points, 16 rebounds, she played like Shaquille O'Neal tonight. She's the smallest Shaquille O'Neal. That's just will and desire and I'm really happy for Leilani. It's been a rough couple of weeks for her but the way that she perseveres and the way that she's learned to ask for help . . . I'm really proud of her. It's really hard to come back from an injury mid-season, especially in conference when you haven't played in the SEC before, so what she's trying to do, what she's done for us has been remarkable. She's just a big time player and she showed that tonight. * * * You look at the way you're playing right now, going into the SEC tournament, people are going to see the Florida Gators have won two in-a-row and you're probably not going to want to play this team coming into the SEC Tournament . . . but how do you feel maybe this team has flipped on a switch here in the last two games? Well, I would say it's really the last four. I think it's been up for about 2-weeks now. I felt really good about the way we competed against South Carolina, even though it wasn't a win and LSU, and I thought that those games helped us to understand . . . you know, our only focus as cliché as it sounds has been: "Play hard, be connected, play for each other and really embrace the moment," and that's what we're doing. * * * [Brittany] Bertie . . . actually shooting the ball. She didn't hit a couple but that's what you want her to do: Continue to shoot. She ended-up 3 of 8 from the 3-point line. How important is it for her to get that "shoot first" mentality, especially going into the post-season? Oh yeah. For sure! I was proud of that last 3 right there she had all the time in the world [Brittany: "And didn't think about it"]. Yeah. Most definitely. We had talked about rebounding. I was proud of the way that we played but to have 16 assists and 10 turnovers on 19 made field goals . . . I think that's pretty good. We're kinda' coming into our own and understanding how to play with each other. We didn't have an off-season, and nobody cares about excuses, but we didn't have an off-season where we got to play with each other. With so many new transfers and just a different dynamic to our team . . . that really hurt us with Jordan and Leilani going out in mid-season. Jordan had 11 rebounds today. They were big time. Her defense was outstanding. Just really everybody top-to-bottom I would say . . . I told our team in the locker room, "Thank you for being so selfless. It's really fun to coach a team like that." In understanding this, again, was another team where we knew we would have to play 5 guards which would put our forwards at a disadvantage in terms of playing time. They embraced that and they're bought-in to us being our best which is what the game called for tonight. * * * Brittany saw too the adjustments you made against that zone, playing 5 guards, so you have Rimdal or Correa pop-up to the elbow of the free throw line and get that jumper, that high percentage look for those guards. That was an adjustment within the game, the zone you saw the whole game that you were able to take advantage of. Yeah. I thought we moved the ball fairly well. I thought we saw the open player. I liked. . . you know we didn't shoot very well in the first quarter . . . I liked the shots that we were taking. It was our defense that propelled us the entire afternoon -- holding them to just 4 made 3-point attempts -- that wasn't, they didn't just shoot poorly. I thought we contested them, we communicated well, we had our hands up, we were high and active. * * * The excitement heading to Greenville, another year, another SEC Tournament, you as the head coach heading into the post-season, just your overall feel around your team right now? Just great. I think we've got a lot of love and a lot of joy and we don't want to have an end to the season. I think they enjoy playing with each other and that's been fun to coach. * * * * *
