As the Idaho women’s basketball team headed into pivotal weekend games at Montana and Montana Sate, here is what Idaho coach Jon Newlee had to say at his weekly press conference.
On consecutive home blowout wins:
“I thought the home stand was great. I thought we really played well on both sides — offense, defense. Everything was going pretty good. We executed the game plan really, really well both nights.”
On Connie Ballestero coming off bench, Karlee Wilson starting:
“I think it’s really helped us. Karlee gives us that great energy at the start of a game. Defensively she really gets after people, doing a great job. I think Connie is more relaxed now coming off the bench and playing more of her game that we’ve seen the last two years. It’s a great luxury to have her — somebody like that coming off the bench.”
On leadership from Barr, juniors:
“They’re stepping up, they’re getting a little more vocal on the floor, which I’m happy to see. That needed to happen and still needs to continue to grow. They’ve always been a really together team anyway, so I think just having Stacey (Barr) be a little more vocal is good, Ali (Forde) and Christina (Salvatore) have always kind of wanted to step into that leadership role and I think they’re doing a great job of that.”
On Barr being Big Sky Player of the Week:
“She was huge. Great honor for her — finally we get somebody in the player of the week. I think she probably could have been that a few more times this year. But for her to get that is great because I think she played great defense. Not only did she score … she was on they’re best players, they’re best shooters and she was shutting them down.”
On possibly peaking at end of season:
“I think we’ve been playing our best basketball the past couple of weeks, and that’s great to see. The challenge is to continue to do that now on the road. The first step was to have a great home stand like we had.”
On his team’s improved defense in home wins:
“They just executed the plan to perfection. (Assistant coach) Christa Sanford gets the plan in place and we talk about it a little bit, but I let her have a lot of free reign with the defense. She’s developing some great game plans for us and the kids are buying in and executing it.”
On importance of final games of regular season:
“The message is get out and win. We gotta win, we know that. We can’t control what else is going on in the league. You control what you can control and that’s the message right there.”