Everything Georgia coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said after the South Carolina game

South Carolina women’s basketball beat Georgia, 74-42, Thursday night in Athens. Following the game, UGA coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson spoke with the media. Here’s everything she said.

Question

It was gonna happen anyway, but how did we prepare for them? Well, pretty much like everybody else prepared. I think we did a good job in the first quarter and they only scored 32 points. So our first two quarters were really good because they usually come in and blow people out in the first and second quarter. So they only scored 18 and 15 in the first and second quarter. So, I think they got a little loose in the third and fourth.

Where do you go from here with a month left in the season?

I have five freshmen on the floor. So you got to keep building. You got to keep them positive. You got to give them some good outlooks. Obviously, the next game will be not the number one team in the country. Are they number one or number two? I don’t know what they are. They’re number two. So the next game won’t be a number two team in the country. So, obviously, we said to them just to keep their heads up, be ready because we, you know, there’s a good chance if we fight really hard and play really hard we can win the next game.

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Question about keeping the freshmen positive and motivated.

I think my staff does a good job, and I think they understand that they got to go through some growing pains, and they understand how lucky they are because South Carolina only played two freshmen today and everybody else is an upperclassman.

So I think they know that they’re lucky that they actually get to play and that they’re out there and they’re playing and they would rather play than not play and have that opportunity to play. So when next year comes around, Trinity’s gonna have a billion minutes of playing.

So her experience is gonna be higher than some of the kids in the country that don’t play as freshmen and then they come out as sophomores and they don’t have that experience. So we try to tell our players that all the time. You can’t exchange that experience.

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Question.

Falling. … It’s just hard to play with a bunch of freshmen in the SEC. It’s just tough.

Where do you feel your strengths are?

The freshmen. I can go on and on. … We’re trying to build it the right way and not just have a cyclone of people coming in every single year and changing it out. It’s really hard to build a team like that.

And that’s why (Dawn Staley’s) team is the way it is because they don’t cycle people in and out. They’ve had this culture for what? 16 years? 16 years. And that was before all the transfer portals. It was before all this money. … So, obviously, she has built it. I think her first year she had won zero games in the SEC. I don’t know what … if you look it up in their first year, yeah. Yeah, so it just takes a while to build it.

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Question

Yeah, I thought Summer (Davis) played really, really hard and pretty fearless, and she played really good defense, and she got some tips, and she was pressuring the ball. And then obviously Mia (Woolfolk). Mia’s a bucket, a human bucket all the time, and when somebody goes and doubles you as a freshman, that means you’re really good. And Trinity (Tuner) is struggling because – the keen eye probably doesn’t see it, but – they always put the best defender on the other team on Trinity.

Question

Yeah, but not keep shooting. You just can’t jack up shots. We’ve got to find other ways to get her shots off, and we got to continue to show her film and keep her spirits up because it’s like Mia, if they’re going to double Mia, that’s a compliment if they put the best guard defender on you Trinity and not on Asia (Avinger) to De’Mauri (Flournoy) or somebody else that means, they know that you, you are, a go-to player for us.

So obviously, in football, you understand that some of the best players you’ve got to really key on those, and I think Trinity, it’s hard for her to understand that right now. But Trinity was an eighth grader playing varsity and in ninth grade playing varsity, and she’s had this pressure for a long time. So she’ll get through it.

Question

Well, we were, I was like, if we don’t get anything in transition really quick, we need to pull it back because you can’t shoot quick shots with this team because it’s gonna be a layup,  layup, layup, layup. They’re great in transition. But they were passing up their wide-open shots. So I told Asia: When we set a high-on ball for you or wing-on ball, you’re open for your pull-up jumper. And, so, obviously, she started hitting it. We showed them film at halftime, too.

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