WNBA Finals Game One Notes and Quotes: Atlanta Dream

Notes

• Angel McCoughtry set a WNBA Finals record for points in a quarter with 19 in the third. The previous record was 14 set by the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi in Detroit on September 8, 2007.
• McCoughtry finished with 33 points, the second highest scoring output in Finals history. She owns the single game points record with 35 last year against Seattle on September 16, 2010.

Dream coach Marynell Meadors

I thought it was a hard-fought game by both teams. It was tied up going into the fourth quarter. We couldn’t find the rim for about four minutes. And everything we did resulted in points for Minnesota, which they did a great job. And I think that the difference in the game was definitely rebounding. They outrebounded us 40-28 and I thought that was a huge, huge gap that we haven’t faced in a long, long time.

On missing Erika de Souza

Erika has averaged about 12 to 15 points per game and right around 12 rebounds. So that tells you what we miss in her. Her physicality. We don’t have anybody that can match that physicality inside. But we will have her for Game 2.

On what the Dream needs to do for Game 2

I think we’ve got to get Erika de Souza scoring when she gets here. And I think Sancho Lyttle will score more. She didn’t score tonight. And that’s very uncharacteristic of her.

On Dream trouble late in the game

They played good defense against us. There’s no question about it. They were very aggressive. They were very physical. And we didn’t hit our shots. And maybe that will change on Wednesday night.
Normally we hit our shots. But I just thought that we could have done a better job as far as running our offenses and taking a little more time off the clock. A lot of times we went with quick shots and missed them and they rebounded. They went and scored. And I think that was a huge part of the game where we lost the lead.

Angel McCoughtry

On Game 2

Have you ever heard the expression “This ain’t football”? We’re going to come back. We got another game. We don’t have to wait a week. We’re going to adjust, we’re going to watch film, we’re going to get better. We don’t have to be down right now. It’s just one game. If you watched the NBA Finals this happens all the time and teams come back. It’s a long series. We’re not going to get down over one loss, but we’re going to build ourselves up. It’s over with now. It’s erased out of our minds, we’re moving on.