Postgame Quotes: Michigan 1, Purdue 1 (2OT)
11/1/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
Nov. 1, 2014
Michigan Head Coach Greg Ryan
On his thoughts on the game ... "The way we're looking at it is we know we can play better, and so that's going to be our focus going into the Big Ten Tournament. You look at the games across the conference and other teams are being upset and we still did not take a loss. The last five games, we have a loss to Penn State, three ties and a win over Illinois. The way we look at it is two-fold; 1. This is the end of an amazing regular season for this team. We're extremely proud of what we've done. 2. We know we can play a lot better and we know how we can play a lot better. That's going to be our focus going forward. We finished third in the Big Ten and we now have a great shot of getting into the NCAA Tournament. There are so many positives that we can take from this season -- Nicky Waldeck shows up and scores her 12th goal of the season tonight.
"Credit to the teams we're playing, we're no longer 'Michigan the young team,' now we're 'Michigan who can beat anybody.' We're everybody's big game now even though we're all freshmen and sophomores. Purdue played out of their minds tonight, Northwestern played out of their minds last week and then did the same again yesterday and knocked off Minnesota. These teams are continuing to fight. I thought Purdue played great tonight."
"Another big positive for us was to get Alyssa Dillon in the game because it allowed us to push Madi (Lewis) up top, and we need her attacking on that right side."
On the team finishing third in the Big Ten after being picked fifth ... "When a team loses eight starters and starts a bunch of freshmen and sophomores, it's been an amazing season for such a young team so far. The fact that they have continued to fight, whether up, down or tied it doesn't matter. They just fight their hearts out. Nobody thought we would be this good. And it's not like we were way back in third, we were fighting for second tonight. I'm just so proud of this team."
On what the team is focused on heading into the Big Ten Tournament ... "Right now the most important thing for us is recovery. We know how we play when we play our best and we haven't played really well since the Ohio State game. We've had two straight double weekends, including last weekend on the road, and then we're on the road again today, so our kids are a little beat up right now. The most important thing will be recovering for Wednesday. In terms of what we can do better on the field, we need to do better in our final third. We need to create better chances and put our chances away."
