UGA women’s basketball head coach Joni Taylor discusses the Lady Bulldogs 80-65 win over Kennesaw State to start their 2019-20 season on Thursday night in Athens, GA at the Stegeman Coliseum.

On Gabby Connally‘s importance in the game…

“Gabby natural position is point guard so freshman year she played the point for us and backed up Taja Cole and sometimes they played at the same time and then obviously last year to get them both on the floor we moved her to the two. Her coming back to the point is really just her natural position. I think the biggest thing was making sure we were able to still get her shots at the point because it’s a lot easier when she was playing off the ball. We worked on that a lot this summer and she’s handled it well. She’s a junior now so she understands and accepts the responsibility that comes with number one being a point guard and also her production and how important it is for us to be successful.”

On Maya Caldwell this year…

“Maya is finally looking like what we thought she was going to be. She is someone who can score on all three levels, she’s a really big guard we play her at the four some. She really had a good summer. She lead us in scoring in all of our closed scrimmages and when we were in Italy. She can score in so many different ways so we can do so many different things with her. What I keep telling her is it’s going to feel different for you this year. Your freshman year you played a little bit, you played spot minutes, but you’re going to be a major contributor and that responsibility is going to feel different. I always tell them that riding in the car is different than driving the car.”

Thoughts on defense tonight…

“I am not very pleased at all with how we defended. I’ll say this; Kennesaw State is a good team. They returned all five starters, three kids on their rosters were freshman of the year respectively when they were freshman. They’re talented and they’re experienced so we knew they were going to come in and give us a good game. We just did some things defensively that we just cannot do. There is a lot to correct on that end. We can’t get driven from the high post, we can’t let them catch it that easily on the block. Their guards were comfortable all night long so we’ve got to a better job of making them uncomfortable.”