Keith Freeman Quotations

She has a lot of ability, and she's going to end up being a good player. We're not going to take anybody that can't play here. Shawn had nothing to do with us recruiting her. It was based on her. She was good enough to play here.

Obviously, Western played very physically. They really did a terrific job of defending us and defending the key components of our offense. They're to be commended for being able to do that. They did a great job.

Oakland's a very good offensive team. I think our team's going to be a lot better by next week. We've been on the road. It's very hard to win on the road in this league. We have to be ready to go against Oakland.

I felt like we got great play out of our entire team.

We just have to have a positive frame of mind, which I think our kids have, we have to confidence, which I think our kids will have, and we've got to have the eye of the tiger.

We've got to play better. We've got to engage our minds and play more with our minds and our spirits.

I thought (Braun) made herself a target a lot more tonight. We did a nice job moving the ball and getting her in a spot where she could do something with it. And Betsy is doing a much better job of taking on-balance shots.

I thought we did a great job of taking away the things that they like to do. We were probably a 6 against Notre Dame and I'd say we were probably an 8 tonight -- 8 or 9.

I thought we controlled game except for that four-minute stretch. What happened in that four-minute stretch, our top seven kids weren't involved in that. We have to get more young kids learning to play.

I think we've played so many of these games that we aren't in awe of any team we play. We think Notre Dame has a good team, and we respect them. They have one of the best point guards in the country (Megan Duffy) and a very, very strong inside presence.

I think whenever you balance academics and athletics and do it at a level of greatness, you're to be commended.

Jamie's a good shooter against zones. She got open looks, and she can make those against zones.

Our room for making substitutions -- there wasn't much room.

That was a tournament-level game in terms of the intensity for both teams.

That was as good of a start as we've ever had in terms of being able to get the ball inside and establish an inside game.

I was proud of our kids; I thought we did a really good job. There were some things we did late that I didn't like. I think if you take away that stretch we played extremely well.

Those are those types of plays that don't show up in the scorebook that are momentum-changers. The great teams have players that make those plays. It was nice to see Lauren step up and do that.

We would liked to have held them to eight or nine.

We worked the ball because they were clogging up the middle. We got a lot of open looks. With Lauren, Carrie and Jamie on the floor it's hard to guard all three 3-point shooters. We got open 3s and made enough of them.

What we tried to do in the second half was pick up the pace. The more we tried to go get 'em, the worse it got. We tried hard. We need to play them a different way.

We wanted to control Megan Duffy, we wanted to keep Notre Dame off the foul line, but we did not stop the high-low game.

UMKC does a lot of the same things that Notre Dame does, but they've got less athleticism and more 3-point shooting. We're going to have to make some adjustments in the way we guard them.

We just need to get the game to be at our speed and our tempo and work on defending their speed, athleticism and physical ability. Duffy can't go crazy on us. We've got to control her. We can't let them run their high-low stuff or get second shots because they're a powerful rebounding team.

We did a good job on the defensive end of making them take contested shots. Defensively, I thought we did a good job to start the second half.

Betsy's first two or three possessions were not good. She is a good player in the middle of the zone.

Every situation is new, and we're going to have to be able to come out with energy. The team that wins this league is going to be the one that comes out and plays every night.

(The taste of the loss) is out of my mouth right now. We're over it. We're playing for the conference championship now.

The thing about Lauren was that she may have gotten frustrated, but she never gave up. When Katie Boone got hurt she was stepping up and ready to go. Because of that, she values where she is now because she had to work so hard for it.

After so much time off, I would rather have played today than practiced. We had some of the same problems Notre Dame did with getting players back to campus because of cancelled flights.

They're certainly the best team I've seen out of Western in terms of character from top to bottom.

It's a hard trip, so to be able to come back and play like we did was good.

It's going to be a tremendous challenge for us and a tremendous opportunity.

It's nice to be able to see what some of those kids can do when they have a little bit of extended time. We haven't had a game like this in a while.

It'll help us on Friday to play on Wednesday. We're able to get rid of some of whatever our layoff created. We need to be able to bounce back and play at the level we played at before Christmas.

They did a great job of getting the ball inside. They're deeper in the post than we are. I think they've done a great job developing post players.

They've really provided a lot of leadership for our program and dedicated themselves to becoming the best they can be.

Any time you come to this place and win it's a major thing. It's a 10-hour trip, you (move through) time zones to get here. So to be able to play with the defensive intensity we did was good for our kids.

Any time you go on the road in the league and win it's good. We accomplished a lot, and our reserve kids learned that they need to continue to work to get where we need them to be.

That's a substantial honor. She is in among great, great student-athletes. She certainly has a tough load.

In my 12 years in this league this is the best it's ever been, and there are no easy games. If you don't come to play you're going to get beat. It's going to be a battle.

I put our kids in a bad position by putting them in too many situations where they were guarding people 1-on-1. They did a good job guarding us. They really limited us.

Aggie needs to learn to play at different tempos. She has one speed n go fast.

Aggie has a lot of ability. When she learns how to do some of the little things, which is just going to take time, she could be a really good player.