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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 30, 2011Muffet McGrawRICK NIXON: Good afternoon, and welcome to today's women's Final Four head coaches teleconference. I'm Rick Nixon with the NCAA, and we're excited certainly with the Women's Final Four coming to Indianapolis in a few days and certainly excited to welcome our first head coach this afternoon, Muffet McGraw, head coach at Notre Dame. Notre Dame is making its first Women's Final Four appearance since winning the National Championship in 2001. SUE DONOHOE: Thanks, everybody, for joining us this afternoon, and I'll briefly just offer our congratulations on behalf of the NCAA and the Division I Women's Basketball Committee to Muffet McGraw and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. We're thrilled to have them come down the Interstate by about three and a half hours and join us here in Indianapolis. I know that it will be a thrill for that program to be here in our capital city. Muffet, congratulations, and we'll turn it over and let the media open it up. COACH McGRAW: We're thrilled to be just three hours from campus, and we're hoping a big Notre Dame crowd follows us down to Indy. We are so excited to be playing close to home and hoping for a lot of green in the stands. Q. I don't ask this pejoratively, but you know this, it's been a long time since you've beaten UConn, and my question is why have they had the success over your program? Is it merely talent? Is it something else? How do you look at it? COACH McGRAW: I think they've had success over everyone over the last three years, pretty much since Maya Moore has been at UConn. I think she is obviously the best player in the nation in my opinion. I think she is somebody that can really control the outcome of a game, and she is just an outstanding player. I think she makes it easy for everybody on her team because they can relax a little bit with her there. I think Connecticut has been pretty much dominant to every school over the past few years. Q. I wondered, Muffet, what's it meant to your team to have Devereaux Peters healthy for a whole year, and not only healthy for a whole year but playing the way you might have expected her to play when you recruited her all those years ago? COACH McGRAW: Well, I think she's elevated our team to a different level. I think that we were a pretty good team in the past, but with her ability to rebound and block shots and run the floor, she's the most athletic player I think we've ever had. And to have somebody like that inside that can do so many things and can rebound with pretty much anyone in the country, I think that she definitely has given our program a huge lift since she got healthy this year. Last year she was a good player and did some good things for us, but this year I think she's playing so much better and a lot more consistently. Q. Are there any times when you notice that -- she said that sometimes walking around campus her knees hurt her. Have you noticed at all in games where you can see she's wincing and you realize maybe I've got to give her a rest? COACH McGRAW: You know, I really haven't. She has not missed a minute of practice because of her knees the entire season, and we've actually had other people who have had to sit out because of their knees bothering them. But I've been impressed that she's been able to get through. She does an ice bath, she ices up, she's constantly walking around with ice bags on her knees, but she hasn't missed a minute and hasn't complained at all. Q. Hopefully she'll stay this healthy next year. Given now this whole year and a half of consistent play behind her, how good can she be next year? COACH McGRAW: Well, she can be really good. I think she can be an all-American. I think the other thing about the injury was this is really the first summer that she was able to work on her game, so not just playing through the season but being able to prepare for the season. Now she's going to have another summer to prepare, and she's going to work on a lot of things. I think she can get a lot better. Q. A two-part question: Number one, can you speak to the pros and cons of having played UConn three times already this year, and then will you reference at all Texas A & M's fourth time through against Baylor in your preparation? COACH McGRAW: I think to the first part, we won't have to do as much personnel with the team. We don't have to be talking in numbers; we can pretty much talk in names. There's definitely a familiarity with the Connecticut team that we don't have to do a lot of in-depth things that we would do with other teams that we're playing for the first time. So in that way I guess it makes it a little bit easier. We definitely will reference the Texas A & M's team's fourth time's a charm I think is the motto for this one because obviously we have played them the same amount of times. I think it's going to be a mental hurdle for us to get over. We've played them three times. It's difficult, I hope, to beat a team four times, and we can take all the good things from the first three games and try to do a few of those a little bit differently. We can try to make our defense a little bit better. I think we have some things we can improve on from those things we've learned from. Q. With these three games from your viewpoint, was there a progression, a positive progression for your time each time through? Did you think, we got a little bit closer to getting over the hump, or was it kind of a roller coaster? COACH McGRAW: You know, I think that the game at home obviously was the best game and the closest game. But the game in the Big East final I think playing on their court and keeping it close kind of mirrored the game at home. I thought that both of those games were good. The game in between, not as good. We really didn't play as well. We haven't shot the ball well against them in any of the games, and that's a big concern for me. Q. Just to follow up on that, you said it's a mental thing, and using what Texas A & M did as maybe a psychological situation, as well, but do you think that that kind of stuff really can have an impact or can help college players today when they're faced with this kind of situation knowing that someone else just had that same experience and was able to get over the hump? COACH McGRAW: You know, I think it helps a little bit, but I think that we're playing with a lot of confidence right now, and I think that for us, we just have to keep playing the way we're playing. We're not going to dwell on the fact that we've lost to them three times this year. I don't think we're going to talk a lot about anything physically. You know, we're going to say here's what we need to work on offensively, here's how we need to play our defense, and then we just have to believe we can win. And I do think we believe we can win because we've had close games with them in the past. Q. It is a neutral site, but playing in your state and at home, can that be an advantage for you? COACH McGRAW: I don't know, I think it's going to be a neutral site. I think that you only get 800 or 900 tickets for your team, so I think that's going to be pretty evenly distributed. We're hoping we get a few more fans that have already purchased tickets because it was in Indianapolis. But I think for us we do get to get on a bus instead of a plane, which is kind of nice, but other than that we're still going to be staying in a hotel in a different city. Q. I just wanted to continue on the line with Devereaux Peters. I know in two of the games this year she was in foul trouble, and I just wondered how much you think that affected the outcome of both of those games, and how do you keep her out of foul trouble this time? COACH McGRAW: Well, you saw that in Tennessee game, as well. She played just 17 minutes and we were still able to hang on and win. I think she's a big key for us. She's definitely somebody that can rebound, which is a big key to the game. She's somebody that can defend, get out in transition, score around the basket, so we would love to have her available for 38 minutes. I think that is a definite key to the game. She played very well in the game at home and was in foul trouble in two of the games, so it would be nice to have her for the entire game. Q. I have a couple of questions for you. I think going into this tournament a lot of folks were focusing on freshman point guards with the No. 1 seeds or at least most of the No. 1 seeds, and it turns out that Bria Hartley will be the only freshman point guard in the bunch, but what do you think the value of having an experienced point guard is at this point in the tournament? COACH McGRAW: Well, I think that you can definitely tell with the two freshmen point guards of the No. 1 seeds that it's a little bit of pressure. There's a lot of pressure going into that game to get to the Final Four. It's a lot for a freshman to take in, and I think that Bria Hartley has the luxury of having Maya Moore as a team leader and I think that has helped her. But for us, having Skylar have the experience last year, playing in the tournament, having somebody else kind of shoulder that burden of running the team, I think she got great experience, and at the same time she was able to kind of just learn and watch and grow, and now as a sophomore really came into her own and had a great tournament for us because I think that she has had a year of experience under her belt. Q. My follow-up question is a little bit off the beaten path, but in what ways do you feel like your team becomes a reflection of your personality and your style as a coach? Can you look at your team and see that in them? COACH McGRAW: I think they reflect Becca Bruszewski, our captain. I think we're all extremely competitive. I think our entire staff and players all share that. We're fighters, we're competitive, we're intense, we want to win. But this team is much looser than any team I've ever had, which is not really a reflection of my personality. I think they're outgoing and have fun, and they're very, very boisterous and passionate on the court. They show their emotions on the court in a way that's a lot different than the teams we've had in the past that were a little more businesslike. Q. I just want to get an update on Becca's knee if you have one. COACH McGRAW: She has been in ice, I think, since we got off the court after the Tennessee game. She definitely has been sore, stiff. We didn't practice yesterday, so she had a day to rest, got into the training room for a good part of the day, and that's something she's going to be doing until we leave. So I expect that she'll do some walk-through things at practice, but she definitely needs to rest a little bit. Q. How effective do you think she can be with that knee? COACH McGRAW: Well, she's tough. She's so mentally tough, I think she's not going to let it slow her down. I think you saw that in the Tennessee game. She played about 37 minutes and just really, I thought, was fighting the whole game; I think 13 points and 8 rebounds and did a great job. You know she wants to play, you know she's going to want to do her best out there, and I think with a few days in between games, I think she'll be fine. Q. Coming back around, I wondered if you could comment on how Connecticut has been able to survive and advance sometimes with only six players, a very unusual situation for their program to have, such a short bench, and how they seemed to have managed to make it work with so few options as in the past years? COACH McGRAW: You know, I don't really think it's a huge disadvantage to only have six players. I think that your team has great chemistry. I think that everybody that's on the floor has played together for a significant amount of minutes. You don't ever look out and go, here's a lineup we haven't worked on much because we're down into the bench a little deeper than we normally go. So I think in that way -- our championship team in 2006, we played six people. We've had teams where we've only had a few options, and I think it kind of makes you stronger. You get in great shape. If you can stay out of foul trouble, it's really not as big a disadvantage as people think. Q. Muffet, obviously it's not a really easy question to answer, but how do you approach, or I guess solve, game planning Maya? Do you look at it as she gets her and you try to take other things away from them or is there a strategy to try to attack her in some way both offensively and defensively? COACH McGRAW: Yeah, I'm not sure that you can stop her, and definitely you can't do it with one person. I think that she is just a phenomenal player. The way she can stop on a dime, elevate and release her jumper, which is just a beautiful shot, I think that she's incredibly difficult to guard. I don't think we have gone into any of the three games thinking we were going to hold her down. We haven't really explored the option of she gets hers and we try to stop everybody else. Dolson really hurt us in the last two games, so I think when you have that inside-outside combination you're pretty hard to guard, and that's a huge problem four our defense. Q. And then just following up on her, as someone who's been around the game for a long time, and obviously you've had your share of all-Americans, as well, where should we now see her in terms of the history of the game? Should we now think of her up in the Swoopes, Cheryl Miller sort of level? Is she above them? Where do you see her in terms of legacy now that she is potentially one or two games away from the end of her career? COACH McGRAW: I think she's the very best. I don't think there's anybody better. I think that she is an amazing player in every facet of the game. I think she works extremely hard. She's really well-respected. She's a great student. I think when you look at the overall package, I don't think there's ever been a player that's better than her. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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