Postgame quotes from CSU vs. Mercer

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Charleston Southern women’s basketball head coach Julie Goodenough speaks about her team’s 87-77 loss against Mercer University Saturday night at CSU Field House.

ON ANOTHER SLOW START

This is the second night in a row that we came out and got ourselves in a little bit of a whole in the first four minutes of the game. We’re going to totally change our pregame warm-up and the way we approach the game. We have to do something because we’re not on a roll in the beginning of the game and there are no excuses for that when you’re playing on your home court.

ON THE STRUGGLES PLAYING AGAINST MERCER

Mercer played a very good game tonight. Any defensive lapse that occurred, they capitalized on it. They knocked down shots and we missed defensive assignments. They just outplayed us on both ends of the floor, and they outhustled us to rebounds. I felt that last night (in the loss to UTSA) should’ve been a really good learning experience for us to lose a game by one possession. We had several different areas that we needed to improve on and I felt that tonight we didn’t improve on anything that we were weak on last night. We spiraled downward with some of the things that hurt us last night.

ON THE OFFENSIVE EXECUTION

Offensively we executed well enough to get open three-point shots and we just weren’t able to knock them down. If you’re not hitting your shots then you have to get some stops on the defensive end, and we didn’t show any grit or determination on the defensive end when our shots weren’t falling. I felt like our offensive execution was good and we got open looks. We did hit our free throws and we did a better job of finishing shots inside, but we didn’t hit our three-point shots. That’s something that you have to have a little bit of a gut-check and get after it on the defensive end to get some stops to allow your team more offensive possessions.