Mike Thibault
Mike Thibault
Mike Francis Thibaultis an American basketball head coach, formerly of the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA, and now of that league's Washington Mystics...
training
From that standpoint, it kind of makes for a very competitive training camp.
composure game good great half lost open played playoff road second series win
It's a great win, when you go on the road and win your first playoff game and play pretty well like we did. That was as good a first half as you could play to open a playoff series and then we lost our composure in the second half and got it back and I just thought we played terrific.
ebb flow fun sit stands
It had to be fun to sit in the stands and watch, because you had such an ebb and flow to the game.
account guard initial looking offense offensive player points second six somebody talking turning whether
They only scored 24 points from their halfcourt offense (Sunday). It's that simple. Their initial offense didn't do much. Getting a second shot, turning us over, that's a lot of points. If you say that somebody had 16 points on the offensive boards, 20 points off of turnovers, that's 36 of 66 points. Six points are when we fouled at the end of the game. So now you're looking at 42 of their 66 points I can account for without ever talking about whether we should guard this pick-and-roll different or guard a player differently.
catch game guarantees huge point pressure puts record road teams time trying winning
It's a huge road win, guarantees a winning road record for us. Every time you win a road game at this point in the season, it puts pressure on the teams trying to catch you to do the same.
national wait
It wasn't unexpected. We had to kind of wait it out a little bit. I wasn't nervous. She had some things to get settled, national team-wise.
forget nba people reach took
People forget that it took the NBA over 20 years to reach this (point),
everybody goes playoffs season wait
Now we're 0-0 and everybody goes and plays. The playoffs are what you wait all season for.
basketball bodies everywhere flying game good kept played poise rugged
It was a very rugged basketball game for long stretches. Bodies flying everywhere ... a lot of fouls ... but we kept our poise at the end. We played good enough defensively at the end of the game to win.
few finals format game great perfect playoff road round scenario teams until upsets
I like the finals format but I don't like the first two rounds. It's never going to be perfect until we get a best-of-five of the first round and get to play our first game at home. Historically, other than a few upsets over the years, the better teams have still won. But it's not a great scenario to go on the road your first playoff game.
beat fair instead last rub won
It had nothing to do with the last shot, it was what he said. They won the game, but instead of being gracious, he had to make a smart-(expletive) comment. They beat us fair and square, no need to rub it in.
bench brought duplicate last players record skilled team
I don't know if you can duplicate the record that we had last year, but I think we're already a better team because of our experience. Our young players will make our bench better. The ones that were here already know what they have to do. The ones that we brought in that new are pretty skilled players.
goal hear helps last maturity ready
I think the maturity of going through last hear helps us. We need to come out and get ready to go right away. We've been through it now two years in a row. This is our goal when we started out and now we're here to go about it.
control difference game gave
It was pretty even most of the way, ... but the difference for me is obvious: turnovers. We had control of the game for a while and we gave it back.