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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 22, 2016

Bobbie Kelsey

Madison, Wisconsin

THE MODERATOR: The women's basketball team closes out the regular season with a pair of games on the road this week. Traveling to Maryland for a 5:30 p.m. game on Wednesday and wrapping up with a 1:00 p.m. game at Purdue on Sunday. Thursday's game can be seen live on BTN Plus.

Head coach Bobbie Kelsey is here.

COACH KELSEY: Believe it or not, we're at the end of another year. I can't believe we're at the end. It's always bittersweet. Obviously, we had Senior Day this last game with our six seniors. We'll miss them. Every year we go through this same thing as coaches. Usually we do have a senior. Some years you may not have one, but for the most part, you do have seniors that are saying good-bye for the last time in front of the stands and the home crowd.

Obviously, we wanted to win the game, but Northwestern, in spite of their record, they're a pretty doggone good team. They have some scorers that can do a lot of things out there.

We got Maryland and Purdue to wrap it up, and those games will be tough, but, again, we'll just keep taking it one game at a time and keeping it basic. I think keeping things simple has helped our team with the turnovers and just keeping things under control as far as scoring and trying to execute our offense and doing the little things in the game. So we look forward to these last two games.

Q. Last year Maryland just kind of walked over to this conference, went undefeated. This year they're not in first place. They're still really good. How do you compare what they are and maybe what have they done to influence the conference and raise the level throughout?
COACH KELSEY: Last year was their first year, so we weren't familiar. I think sometimes, when you're familiar with teams, you can play them a little bit better. Obviously, them being a Final Four type caliber team, it's going to be tough no matter who they play. I think Ohio State matches up really well with them. I think they beat them -- if I'm not mistaken, they got beat by another team. I'm not sure exactly who that is.

They're a tough cover. They have the number one recruiting class next year. They've got most of their team coming back. It's a tough cover to try to beat that kind of team, but that's why you play the games. You still play them, and you can upset anybody if you go in and do the little things and make your shots and execute on the offensive end.

For them to join the conference, they really ramped it up for everybody. It's going to help your recruiting because, obviously, kids from that area know, if they don't go there, they can come back that way and play in front of their home team -- I mean, in front of their family and friends.

Maryland's a good addition. I think they're a great team and well coached, and they're going to be tough.

Q. You talked about turnovers. The team averaged just 10 1/2 on the weekend. Your ball control has improved here?
COACH KELSEY: Oh, yeah, that's key. You have to be able to keep the ball secured, not give it to the other team because we don't have a lot of depth. Like I said, our margin of error is very slim. We're trying to make sure that we don't give the ball back quickly or just carelessly. You have to take care of it. You have to give yourself an opportunity on every possession to get a shot off.

So we've really been stressing it to our kids. We go over things over and over so they're comfortable, they know their options, and they don't feel like they have to then go and try to create something that's not there.

I think in the past that's been our problem. You know, you get down to a play, and you've just got to make one. Well, if you don't know the options or you're not sure, then you tend to make more mistakes. So we've really done a great job with that. I think that's something that last year really hurt us. This year it hasn't hurt us as much as it has in the past.

Q. How do you get the offense going here with the postseason coming up?
COACH KELSEY: That's a good question. Because Nicole has paid attention to a whole lot more than she has in the past, Mic has not been as consistent, not that threat she was before her injury. I think, when you don't have two or three people that they have to guard, it makes it harder for the ones they do have to guard. Dakota's been covered, but she's shown what she can do.

But you've got to get them scoring at the same time. You have a game or two where one will score and the other two -- I call them the big three -- Mic, Dakota, and Nicole. If we can get them scoring at the same time, then you've got to cover a post player and two guards. Which one of them is your point guard? But they have not been able to score at the same time. I'm trying to figure out why not.

We have plays to get Mic the ball in certain situations, Nicole the ball in certain situations, Dakota the ball. But some of that falls on players. They have to come ready to play and be confident that they are a threat. Sometimes when the shots aren't going right away, they kind of get a little down about whether they can make those shots. We're always trying to lift them, hey, you've done it before. We've seen it. Let's score here and get it done again.

I think that would be helpful if we can get those three, and then whoever can add on top of those three. You know, every team has a three, big three, I call them, that you have to pay attention to. You can name three on each team in our conference, and you have to do that. We've just got to get ours playing at the same time, and I think that's been a problem with the consistency.

It's not an injury thing. I think for Mic she's confident her knee is fine, but she just can't get going. That's been disappointing, I know for her personally, because she knows what she can do out there. Nicole, she's going to get her shots. She's struggled a little bit, I think, because of the fact they're face guarding her. And then others have to come along.

Q. We talked earlier about the scoring in the conference yesterday. There's three teams that got well over 100 points. That put even more pressure on every team to have more offensive threats on the floor?
COACH KELSEY: Some of that. I know we try to hold opponents down. I don't think anyone scored 100 on us, but we haven't scored 100 either. In that game, it was all offense, the Michigan State-Minnesota. When you've got Banham having 52 points and Powers over here with 40 and whoever else adding on, that's an incredible display of offensive firepower.

I think in the tournament those teams are probably going to maybe sniff around the tournament. I know Michigan State probably has a really good shot. I'm not sure about Minnesota. But in my experience, you'd better play both ends of the floor because those shots -- the better teams probably won't give you those looks that you're used to getting. So I think that hurts some teams when they maybe don't play the defense that they're going to need to play down the road. We need the offense too. You've got to play both ends of the floor.

It does put a little pressure on you, but if you have a defensive scheme because you don't have those kind of people that can really get shots up and score 50-some points in a game, you'd better be playing some defense, and maybe a little bit of both when you don't have quite the matchup with the other team that maybe they can score a little bit more than you can.

Q. Can you talk about how crucial these last two games are? Just trying to get things turned around, especially heading into the Big Ten Tournament.
COACH KELSEY: Yeah, they're very important. There's some teams that are one game above or below us in standing. So depending on how maybe the bottom four shake out, you can be anywhere in the seeding from 11 to 14.

So these games are important for us, but all of our games are important because, again, we don't have quite the margin for error that some other teams have. We have to bring our absolute best game every time. To close out, you do want to finish strong. That's always the goal, to finish as strong as possible. Both of them on the road, and we haven't really done that well on the road.

So this is an opportunity for our kids, especially the seniors that are going to be leaving, to show that we can do what we've done here at the Kohl on the road.

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