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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 30, 2011

Geno Auriemma

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Welcome to today's women's Final Four head coach's teleconference. Joining us for this afternoon's call is Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma seeking a third championship and an eighth title overall.
This afternoon we'll open up with a quick comment from the Chair of the Division I Basketball Committee, Marilyn McNeil.
MARILYN MCNEIL: Geno, congratulations. Welcome back. You made the committee look good, you did the work you were supposed to do, so that was easy.
COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, you were there. You heard me.
MARILYN MCNEIL: Is there enough air out of the ball yet?
COACH AURIEMMA: I owe you this weekend, believe me.
MARILYN MCNEIL: We do want to congratulate you and the Connecticut program, what a fine display, obviously setting the ball very high for women's basketball. But please share our congratulations from the committee to you and the Connecticut program. Safe travels and let's have a great weekend.
COACH AURIEMMA: Thank you. And I was just telling Sue before you got on, it's never easy on your end to get it right, and it's never easy on our end to get it right. But in the end four teams are going to show up this weekend, and it's the right four teams, every year it is. It's a great show, every year it is. Every one of us, committee members, coaches, fans, players, everyone involved in the game, should feel really, really good about how we're doing it.
MARILYN MCNEIL: Totally agree. And thank you for helping us lead the way.
COACH AURIEMMA: You're welcome.
THE MODERATOR: We'll turn to an opening statement from Coach Auriemma.
COACH AURIEMMA: It's every coach's goal at the beginning of the season to try to get their team to the Final Four. It's every player's goal to be playing this coming week.
Unfortunately, only four teams get a chance to do that. And I want to congratulate first and foremost Notre Dame and Stanford and Texas A&M and their coaches and their players. It was great to watch. Our players enjoyed watching all the other games. The games that we played in were obviously difficult for us in one way or another.
And our players were able to do in the postseason exactly what we have been doing for most of the regular season. And at this time of the year I'm usually happiest for our seniors because they get a chance to finish their careers in a way that most seniors hope to finish their careers, at the Final Four with a chance to win a national championship.
So from Lorin Dixon and Maya Moore, I'm thrilled to death. I know we're all excited about getting on a plane and coming to Indianapolis.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Just wanted you to address the play of Lorin Dixon, especially over these last two games and over the whole season, just her attitude, having a freshman start over her this year being a senior and what kind of leadership she's provided.
COACH AURIEMMA: Well, one of the things that we talk about all the time is all of us, coaches, players, everybody, our greatest strength sometimes is our greatest weakness. And Lorin is a great teammate, and she's a tremendous role player. That's one of her strengths.
One of her weaknesses is that she's content as a freshman, as a sophomore, as a junior, and even this year, to a certain extent, to let people come in and be the starters.
And we as coaches had always hoped that if that was going to be her role and that's the role that she wanted, that she would take advantage of it and treat herself as a starter, as a contributor, who, without whose contributions, we wouldn't be able to make it to the Final Four.
And there were times during Lorin's career here where she did just that, but there were too many times where she just settled. As I've said during these past three weeks, something changed and it might have been -- it might have started at Senior Night. Might have started leading up to Senior Night.
But from that day to last night I've seen the Lorin Dixon I thought we were recruiting coming out of high school, and she's been exactly what you want a senior to be, exactly what you want someone who has been to three Final Fours, won two national championships. She's been everything that our team has needed, and I couldn't be happier for her and I couldn't be more proud of her, because, you know, these last three, four, five weeks is what she's going to remember, not the previous three years.
So I'm thrilled to death for her, and I know all the other players are as well.

Q. Just a follow-up, on the court, what exactly is the major problem she presents to the opponents when she comes in? Is it just the total change of pace she gives you or is it her ability to get in there and rebound? What is it that makes her so difficult for the opposition?
COACH AURIEMMA: I guess it's a commentary on our rebounding. You're saying our 5'5" sub comes in and helps us on the boards. So I'll make sure to pass that along to Maya and Stefanie and Kelly. So thank you for that, Pat.
But what she does, what Lorin does is generally when she steps on the court she's generally the quickest player on the floor. Very rarely is she not. So automatically the tempo of the game changes.
The second thing she does is defensively we're able to exert more ball pressure with her on the floor, which changes the other team's offense a little bit. It allows us to take Brittany off the ball -- not Brittany -- Bria Hartley off the ball a lot of times, and that gives not only Bria but the rest of us, the rest of our team, a different look.
So just making one substitution changes the complexion of the game in so many ways, that when Lorin is the way she's been, I don't know that there's a lot of teams that are ready for that kind of drastic change.

Q. Could you please comment on what a difference a completely healthy Devereaux Peters has meant to Notre Dame this year? She played almost a whole season last year, but clearly she's the player who they had hoped she would be before the knee injury.
COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, I don't think that anybody either in our league or around the country has had a chance up until this season to see the Devereaux Peters that Muffet McGraw recruited out of high school. And this year we're finally getting a chance to see that, and certainly the people in our league appreciated it because she was our Defensive Player of the Year in our league, and she changes the way you attack them. They're so physical inside, it's a great combination that she and Becca have inside.
They're very, very difficult to play against, and the way she can play inside and block shots, go out on the perimeter and defend against wing players and guards, they've got somebody that's very, very difficult matchup for anybody. And we certainly know. We've had to deal with it for the last three games.

Q. At one point this could have worked out as a Final Four with freshmen point guards starting. Instead the way it's worked out is you're the only one that has a freshman point guard starting in Bria. Are you concerned about the experience factor and how do you think she'll do holding up against the other more experienced guards?
COACH AURIEMMA: Well, I don't know. You know, because we have Maya, I don't think Bria got the attention that the other ones got. So she's been kind of doing her thing every game, and she's going to -- she's certainly going to be familiar with the people she's playing against on Sunday, because she's seen Notre Dame's probably got the best group of guards when you add in Skylar Diggins and Mallory and Novosel. I think those three guys are tremendous.
So Bria's had a chance to see all of them. She's had a chance to play against Pohlen, and at this time of the year, you know, I don't know that you worry so much about the other people. I think my focus with Bria is going to be about what we need her to do for us, not necessarily her matchup against them, whoever it may be, whether we're lucky enough to play two games or just one.
And that's kind of been our focus with her. The one time I did get her to play some defense, though, to be honest with you, is when we were getting ready to -- I think we're playing Baylor in the second game and then there was another time when we were playing Oklahoma, and they have a really good young guard, Ellenberg, and I mentioned to her that by the end of the year we would probably play against the three best freshman guards in America and that she was probably in the top five somewhere. And from that day on, she started to play a little bit of defense. So I've got to find something else to get her mad about.

Q. Maybe you can emphasize she's young and the rest of them are old and get them fired up. That might work.
COACH AURIEMMA: She is young, believe me. Younger than you think. But I wouldn't trade her for any other guards in the tournament. Trust me.

Q. A quick follow-up. How do you think this UConn team reflects your personality and coaching style this year?
COACH AURIEMMA: This team, not much. I don't have a lot in common with the players on this team, to be honest with you. We get along great and I love every one of them. They're all -- they're all great, great kids that I enjoy spending time with.
But, you know, Kelly Faris, Maya Moore, even Bria, they're very quiet kids, very quiet, very reserved in so many ways. Stefanie is a little more outgoing. But this team's pretty low key. Maybe that's why they haven't been affected by a lot of this stuff that's happened to them this year, the streak, the thin banks, the unbelievably difficult schedule, you name it.
They're really low key. They're not highly emotional. So we play off each other pretty well. They calm me down and I get them riled up every once in a while. I think it's a good combination.

Q. I just noticed yesterday you said this season reminded you of '91. And I was curious what ways that was, besides the fact you went through Philly and the regional.
COACH AURIEMMA: How we played a lot with five guards, how small we were relative to every other team, how limited our bench was, relative to who we played. It was a team of some players that had never been there before, you know, that we were counting on.
It was our first regional ever. So we were so excited to be there and I looked at some of our freshmen and they had the same jitters and the same nervousness.
So I just thought 20 years later here we are with another small team, with a thin bench, with a couple of young guys playing key roles and it was a pretty guard-oriented team in so many ways. So I just thought there were some similarities there. I don't know why else.

Q. If I could follow-up, just talking about playing a team four times in a year and how hard that is, especially one that's played you as hard as Notre Dame has this year.
COACH AURIEMMA: You know, you don't like it, but you can't avoid it. You'd much, much rather play somebody you don't know and doesn't know you. But unfortunately the schedule that we played and the league that we're in, at this point in the season, when you get to the Final Four, you're going to have to play somebody really, really good. And so are they. They're going to have to play somebody really good.
It's unfortunate that we're going at it for the fourth time. But I can see why, the strength of our league and. I was just saying I was reading someplace where Kim was saying there was a conspiracy to try to put us and Tennessee together; that the NCAA had something up their sleeve, that's why they matched us in the semifinals if we would win and they would win, but I really think the conspiracy was started by Muffet. I think she knew that after the way they played us those three times, she wanted another crack at it. So if you want to blame anybody for us playing four times, I think it's Muffet's fault.

Q. So much is said about your phenomenal winning percentage with your program, but very little is said about the extremely high graduation rate of your players. Talk about how that must be satisfying you as a coach as well as a member of the UConn faculty.
COACH AURIEMMA: I'm certainly incredibly proud of it. The kids that we recruit are students first and foremost. If they were just good students, don't get me wrong, we wouldn't recruit them. They've got to be really good basketball players, and they are.
But we try not to put ourselves in that position where we're going to recruit somebody who is a good player who we think can't make it here or doesn't want to make it here and is going to be a high-maintenance kind of person that we need to motivate to be a good student. I'm just not in that. That's not my role.
So the kids that we get are highly motivated. They want to be good students. They want to be good players. But you know, everything I just said, that's probably true for 99 percent of all the women's programs in this country, and I bet you if you looked at every Final Four team that's going to be there this year and you took the grade point averages of every one of those kids, you would find the same story line going through each one of those four teams.
It's just something I think that's inherent in women's basketball; that for the majority of these kids, being great students and doing well in school and graduating, that's all part of the deal. There's no thought about leaving early, going to the pros, doing this, doing that, agents and some of the stuff that those guys' coaches have got to worry about on a daily basis.
That's not here right now. And that's one of the joys of coaching women's basketball. And I betcha Gary and Tara and Muffet would tell you the exact same thing.

Q. Geno, I first want to apologize ahead of time for not being as polite as the Midwest people as an East Coaster.
COACH AURIEMMA: I'd be shocked if you were. So thank you.

Q. You're welcome. The self-analysis obviously is not easy. But I'd like to directly ask you how would you assess your coaching staff's job this year with this group.
COACH AURIEMMA: Somebody asked me that yesterday, and it's a difficult question to answer because you always feel like you do a pretty good job. There are some years when the year's over, you sit back with your staff and you all look at each other and you go: We weren't very good. We did some things that we're not proud of. I wish we would have handled these situations better or managed this situation a little bit better.
So there's those years. But you don't -- unfortunately, in this business, you don't sit around at the end and say: Hey, guys, you know we were really, really good. Congratulations. We as a staff really exceeded our own expectations.
Unfortunately, we don't get to do that. And this year I think, given everything that we had to do, the level of expectation at Connecticut is unlike anywhere else, first of all.
So for us to be where we are now, that's kind of expected. So if you're not careful, if we're not careful as coaches and as a program, we kind of undermine, underplay, undervalue what we do.
But I know how hard my coaching staff works. Not me, I mean, I don't, but I know how hard Chris and Marisa and Shea, I know how much time they put in, I know how hard they work with these young kids. I know what kind of work has been done with Stefanie Dolson and Bria Hartley to get them from where they were as freshmen in September to where they are now.
And I don't know what kind of job we did. I haven't seen any of the Coach of the Year things other than the one from WBCA. So I don't know what kind of coaching job we did. I just know what my coaches did, and I know how my players feel about it, and it remains to be seen what anybody else thinks about them.

Q. Starting to see a lot of stories now which try to place Maya Moore in a historical context among the greatest players in the history of the women's game. I'm not going to ask you to rate her, but I do wonder now if -- I just want to get your reaction now starting to see some of these stories, and, if nothing else, is it appropriate to place her in the vaunted heights of Cheryl Miller and Diana and the people who we -- Sheryl Swoopes, the people we've come to mention when there's a discussion about the greatest players ever as collegiates.
COACH AURIEMMA: Well, think back to the people you've named. How many of them accomplished in college what Maya did?

Q. Not many.
COACH AURIEMMA: So that answers the question. If you mentioned five names to me, I don't care which five names you name, other than Diana, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody that went to four Final Fours, 12 national championships, scored 3,000 points, was First-Team All-American four years in a row and led a team of a bunch of young people that have no other All-Americans to the Final Four and played a schedule that we played and won as many games as we did and played as well as she did in all those big games.
You would say: Where does she fit in among the great ones? Should we mention her name? I would say you're not going to be able to mention a lot of names before you get to her name. For sure I'm certain of that.

Q. Earlier, Muffet McGraw said that -- when asked about your thin bench that sometimes that might be a little overplayed; that she said when they won the title in 2001 they basically used six players. Tara earlier today pointed out that she played her starting lineup, five players, the entire second half against Gonzaga. Are there some advantages to having a short bench at this point?
COACH AURIEMMA: There are advantages to having a thin bench, for one game, for one-half. Having to do that for two months, that starts to wear on you, if you're not careful.
The advantages I think are such that I think offensively you can get into a flow that maybe you can't get into if you're playing eight, nine players. I think players get a chance to play through some mistakes, you know, some stretches of the game where things aren't going their way. You might have a tendency to take them out, and they may end up never getting a feel for the game. So there is some benefit to it, no question about it.
I wouldn't want to be in that situation, though. I mean, I'm not thrilled about going out there with six players that I know I can count on.
But at the same time you can't worry about it, and it is what it is. But if I had my druthers I'd rather have eight.

Q. I was wondering, you talk about everything that Kelly brings to the team now. I was wondering if you had a first impression of her when you went out to Indiana, when you first saw her, if you had a first impression of her and the environment like surrounding her program or that she was playing in at the time.
COACH AURIEMMA: First off, you know, Kelly doesn't come from one of the big huge national-power high schools that some of these others, certainly not Christ the King or Mater Dei, some of these high schools that produce great players year in, year out. So that's different about her.
Second of all, you know, she's 5'10". Five whatever, if you stretch her out. And she played center in high school and played forward and played guard and played high post, low post, out on the wing.
She did everything for her team. But she did it averaging like 13, 14 points a game, not 35. So you had to look closely at all the little things that she did to say, wow, I think this kid could really have an impact at Connecticut. And somebody would say: Where? I would say: I don't know. I don't know where, but I think she can. We'll find out where it is when she gets there.
Turned out she had a bigger impact than I thought, because she was an even better athlete than I thought. She's stronger physically and tougher than I thought.
And sometimes people want to talk a lot about intangibles, and I certainly believe in intangibles, but I think we overlook just how gifted she is as an athlete and how many things she does well. But she doesn't do anything great except she plays harder than just about anybody in America.
And we're lucky. We've got a couple of kids that are like that. But she's a good enough passer. She's a good enough shooter. She's a good enough passer. She's a good enough rebounder. She's a good enough defender, maybe one of the best defenders in the country, and she's tough. So that negates all the stuff that she doesn't look like or she doesn't appear to be like.
And Jamelle and C.D. kind of both saw that. And when I saw her I saw it. And we decided to take a chance, and it's one of the best things we've ever done.

Q. What was your first reaction after seeing the Final Four fill out the way it did and the challenge it presents for your team?
COACH AURIEMMA: Well, I never really think about who should be there, who shouldn't be there, who I want to be there. I try to avoid thinking ahead because it never works out in your favor when that happens.
So when I saw the three teams that are out there, you could make a case for all three of them and say all three of them deserve to be there. There's not one of those teams that you would take away and say, well, so-and-so should be there instead of them.
And we've played Stanford and we've played Notre Dame three times, and I've seen Texas A&M in person against Rutgers. And they're all different. They're all different. This is probably one of the more unique Final Fours.
I don't think there's a lot of similarities between these four teams. Distinctive, very distinctive styles of play, in personnel, in types, in size, in speed, in quickness.
There's a little bit of everything. So it's going to be a true test for whoever can win these two games, because they're going to have to -- they're going to have to adjust to a variety of things. And that's kind of exciting.

Q. Talk a little bit about where you've played them three times, where do you think the game's going to be won or lost? Do you have a feel for the strengths and the weaknesses? I'm sure you do at this point. Where do you think the game will be won or lost? Give us a couple of key items there.
COACH AURIEMMA: I think this is all about me and Muffet. I think this is personal, I mean, after those three games our teams are evenly matched. I think this is about me and Muffet, what she's going to wear, what I'm going to wear, whether she can defend me in the post and whether or not, you know, her high heels, she's going to stab me in the eye with one of them.
I think this is a personal vendetta between the two of us. We're both from Philly. Both products from the same area. And this is a grudge match that goes way, way back between me and her (laughter).
They are so, so balanced it's unbelievable when you watch them play, how they spread the ball around. And how much of a difference -- someone earlier said, how much of a difference Devereaux Peters makes. God, Natalie Novosel, she came out this year and played as well as -- if it wasn't for Maya Moore, I would tell you she was the most impactful player in the league this year.
No question about it in my mind. What Skylar Diggins has done for them to give them a scoring point guard who is also a great leader for them, and she's smart.
You know, trying to find weaknesses in their game, they shoot it well from the perimeter. They knock you around inside. They're very physical.
We have to find a way to attack those green fingernails, though. They're a little bit of a problem for me. Other than that, I don't see a lot of weaknesses in their team.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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