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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 30, 2011

Gary Blair

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. This is our fourth and final teleconference this afternoon with head coach Gary Blair from Texas A&M. And just a quick note: Texas A&M is making its first appearance in the Final Four here in 2011.
At this time I'd like to introduce the Chair of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee, Marilyn McNeil, who's also vice president, director of athletics at Monmouth University, for a quick welcome.
MARILYN MCNEIL: Gary, congratulations on behalf of the NCAA Basketball Committee. Gary, on a personal note, I came to watch you early in the fall, and I said, wow, you've got something there. And certainly have watched you over the last five years, your program, play your way into the tournament and stumble a few times, but it's got to be worth it to experience the thrill that you had last night, and you certainly gave our television audience and those fabulous fans down in Dallas a great game to watch.
COACH BLAIR: It was good for the state of Texas, and I said before the press conference, this is the biggest game that's ever been played in the state of Texas in women's basketball, pro or college or high school. And I thought Baylor had a great team, very deserving of their No. 1 seed and could easily have been to the Final Four.
And I think you had a number of teams that could have got to the Final Four. Notre Dame was one of them. And when you're a 2 seed and you beat a 1 seed, I don't think it's an upset. I just think there happens to be a little bit more parity in the game, and there's more than just four teams or two teams now that like we used to have in the past.
There's a lot of teams that could win it. We're just one of the few that were lucky enough to get there.
MARILYN MCNEIL: I agree. I'm glad to see the parity. But you're part of the reason that the bar has been raised and everybody's reaching it. I want to congratulate you and Texas A&M. I hope you have safe travels and look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis. Congratulations and good luck.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement.
COACH BLAIR: When I left, I took a top 25 job in Arkansas eight years ago. That was a very tough decision. But it was a smart decision for me to come to A&M. It was in the bottom of our conference. And I believe this is just a great coaching conference.
Nobody leaves the Big 12 unless you're asked to leave. But people from other BCS conferences come in here, from Kristy Curry to Bonnie Henrickson, to myself, Kurt Budke. It's a great conference and then the competition gets you ready to play in the playoffs. And I think that's very important. And I don't know this for a fact, but somebody check, has anybody ever held four opponents under 50 points in the NCAA Tournament to get here?
I think that says a lot about our team. It's the best offensive team that we've ever had. But our defense is not as good as what it's been in the past, but in the NCAA Tournament I hope we're peaking at the right time, because we've played very good defense in our last four ballgames.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Two-part question. Number one, how much, if at all, do you think the experience factor is going to come into play between -- with Stanford? And, two, just a quick assessment of Stanford from what you know.
COACH BLAIR: They've been to four straight Final Fours, you've got a Hall of Fame coach that's won three national championships, been to a number of Final Fours. The experience factor is in age, and I'm older than Tara and I'm going to use that to my advantage. That's the number one thing I've got over her right now. And I don't think she can do a thing about that.
She's either going to have to catch up with me -- we're going in there, we're playing totally relaxed. Stanford is the best shooting team in the nation, shooting 49 percent. They have no weakness. They've got a strong bench. They run the heck out of the triangle offense and they're the only team that's beat Connecticut this year, so what do you not like about Stanford.
The two sisters that are 45 minutes from my hometown, I recruited them hard. If Tara will remember, I told her when she got the first sister that that would be the best player and the other one to come that's ever played at Stanford.
Now, I'm sure she might argue, well, there's been so many great ones there, but that's how much respect I have for the sisters there. They blend in. They're great teammates. They share the ball and they're relentless on the boards.
And then you start throwing in Pohlen, who has had a great senior year, very deserving of her All-American; Pedersen, who has been through the trenches and has done everything for that program; then you start looking at people like Tinkle who comes off the bench.
And it's just a great ball club. Give her a lot of credit. I just hope she stays out of Texas. And, shoot, she's got another point guard coming from Texas next year. She needs to start paying taxes down here or at least let me start coming up there.
If I can't get players, let me get some of that stock in some of those tech companies around Palo Alto.

Q. Gary, I'm sure by now you know the history of the struggle of women just to get into A&M back in the '60s and all the struggles they went through and how that's all sort of completely changed, and with Mr. Gates and I guess Mr. Burns coming in and bringing in high-profile coaches like yourself, can you sort of talk about that change in culture? I'm not sure there's another school where there's been such a change in the welcoming and appreciation, celebration of women than there has been at A&M.
COACH BLAIR: It's sort of funny. I got out of high school in '63. And my dad wanted me to go to A&M. My brother went one year here. And my mother wanted me to go to Texas. But at 17 I thought I was smarter than both of them. I went to Texas Tech where there were women. That's one of the main reasons I didn't come to A&M, even though I was a walk-on baseball player.
I went to Texas Tech, just because I didn't want to go to an all-male school. And now things have changed. Right now I think it's about 52 to 48, men versus women, here. We've got right at close to 50,000 students. It is just a great academic school between Texas and ourselves, it's a tossup.
But of course I'm proud of Texas A&M. What Gates did when he came here, he did a tremendous job realizing what traditions were in place and what needed to change.
And there always needs to be change. And you've got to usually have an outsider to come in, because sometimes the insiders, they want no change. But smart people at A&M realized we needed a change of direction at the presidency. We brought Bob Gates in.
Secretary of defense now. My secretary of defense now is Vic Schaefer, and he's just as good at what he does. And we were able to bring in Bill Byrne. I'm here because of Bill Byrne and the vision that he had. I'm his first hire. He came from Nebraska where he was underappreciated for all that he did in that program and raising all those teams up.
Now he's come in and done the same thing here without the big-name profile coaches. I'm not a big name. Okay. I'm not in nobody's hall of fame. I'm just Gary Blair, a basketball coach, a builder, and I'm here at a place that really wants women's basketball. Before Kim Mulkey turned down this job, and Sylvia Hatchell turned down this job back when they knew A&M was not committed towards women's athletics or really women's basketball. And nobody would touch it until it became committed. And that all started when Bill Byrne came in here.
It's not the salary he gave me, even though it doubled what I was making at Arkansas, it was the commitment and the facilities and the upgrade and what we were going to do. He was all about building and winning championships. And that's what we're doing here in all sports now. Not just football, we're doing it in every sport.

Q. There was a lot made as the tournament began that three of the No. 1 seeds had freshmen point guards and two of those teams didn't move forward. I was wondering if you thought that that was the testament to the importance of an experienced point guard.
COACH BLAIR: I think it's very important. Point guards my assistant coaches do a great job recruiting, but I choose my own point guard. We've been recruiting Sydney Colson since when I first got here and I could see her as a sixth grader playing AAU ball and the excitement she had. Isn't it funny, like last night we beat one of the greatest point guards to ever play the college game in Kim Mulkey. But she had a freshman point guard.
So sometimes a freshman point guard has got to be able to read the different defenses to involve everybody into the offense, not just a 6'8" Brittney Griner. Because you've got to feel like everybody is needed, whereas in our ballgame when they were shutting down Adams early or she was shutting herself down due to foul trouble, my point guard and myself were calling a lot of different sets for our 2 and 3 player.
And I think Meighan Simmons struggled also from Tennessee. Went 1 for 10. I've been there before with freshmen point guards, you live and you love them, but sometimes it's the decision-making, it's not the ability, it's the decision-making that they make under pressure.
And my kid just had a better ballgame last night, and a lot of it was just her experience and her failures that she's had in other tournaments. The failure that she had three years ago losing to Briann January at Arizona State who just tore her up.
And then losing the next year to Gonzaga out there to Vandersloot. She learned by playing against two great ones. So when she came up against the Rutgers, the Georgias, and the Baylors, I think she was the best person on the floor at that position.

Q. Quick follow-up, this is off the beaten path, but to what degree do you think your team reflects your personality as a coach?
COACH BLAIR: Oh, shoot. If I had to put myself as a coach, I would probably be the John Madden of basketball, I guess. I'm not your Leon Barmore or Pat Summitt or Geno Auriemma. The guy with the great basketball background that had a little bit of game. I didn't have much game. I sat on the bench in basketball, and I played baseball.
And I've had to learn the game through the girls that I've had the opportunity to coach. So I'm constantly learning by TV. I've got a legal pad next to me watching all those late night games on the West Coast, copying down. I'm an offensive coach. I believe in pressure. Pressure defense, pressure offense, attack mode.
The most boring thing to me is somebody that runs a flex offense or somebody that sits in a 2-3 zone for the 40 minutes. It's boring.
And I want to attack, whether we zone it or man it or trap it or full court press it, that's just my style. I know I'm unorthodox. I've got some weird stuff. Like Andy Landers -- was a backhanded compliment when he said the other day that Bobby Knight wouldn't have anything to do with our defense or something that Coach Schaefer put in. I think Bobby Knight would be very proud of the defense we play.
Is that unorthodox that we front the post and pressure the ball and play weak side and take the high post away? We've been doing it now for a number of years, at Stephen F., at Arkansas, and here. It's how we play. We must be doing something right, because we lead the league in assist-turnover ratio. We force turnovers, and kids want to play our style of ball because it also helps advance their game to that next level.
That's one reason Danielle Adams came to us instead of going to another school, because they said, Hey, I'm way overweight, I know I'm good, but his style is going to get me ready for the WNBA. And she'll be one of the first players drafted in the WNBA because she knows how to play the game, and she plays both ends of the court.

Q. Can you compare and contrast the 1998 you made the Final Four as a 9 seed and nobody really expected you to be there, and now it's not that much of a shock that y'all are there now. Can you talk about what you were feeling 13 years ago as opposed to last night when you all are cutting down the nets?
COACH BLAIR: 13 years ago, we were 7 and 7 in the SEC. We tied for 6th. We were not even 6th by ourselves.
We were a 9 seed. Mimi Griffin and Robin Roberts were the two television commentators. Mimi picked us to lose every game. Every game. We won the first one pretty easy against Hawaii. Then when Harvard beat Stanford, who is now who we play next, we made Harvard to sound like the LA Lakers. And then we blew out Harvard, then we played Marian Washington in Kansas, we were out on the West Coast for 13 days because we could not afford to come back and forth.
So we were there for Stanford's regional and then to San Jose. We were Good Morning America's team because we played so late. The games didn't start until 9:00 Pacific time. It was too late for all the newspapers, and so you had to call the radio and TV to find out if we even had won.
And so we were Cinderella. When we beat Duke, that was supposed to be Duke's first time to get to the Final Four. And I think they were a little bit cocky that ballgame going into it, and I had, again, a senior point guard in Kristi Smith who was very, very good, and she made everybody else around her better. And that's what you need when you go to the playoffs.
You need that experience, but you need somebody that's going to just have that excitement. Kids want to play with her. They want to be recruited by her. And that's the same thing that Kristi Smith had for us in '98 and Sydney Colson has for us now. She's our best recruiter. She's our captain. A four-year captain as a freshman. Come on, you've got to have something going for you.
So we were Cinderella. The bad luck about that in '98, we had to play Tennessee's best team ever in the semifinals. And Kayelle made it from North Carolina State and they had to play LA Tech. If Kay and I could have played first and enjoyed each other, who knows, the real Cinderella might have won the whole thing. But the two best teams by far were Tennessee and LA Tech. And they proved it by beating both of us handily, and then Tennessee won another national championship.

Q. How does it feel now?
COACH BLAIR: It feels great because I do not have to apologize for who we are. I don't have to apologize because of the style of defense that we play. I don't have to apologize because I might not have all the McDonald's All-Americans that some of these other teams have.
I might not have to apologize because we're not a former national champion like the other three, but if we win the whole thing, we will have earned it, because I think we're every bit as good as the other three teams that are there.
And I'm sure Muffet feels the same way. Before the tournament started, I didn't want to be in Tennessee's region, because I thought Tennessee was playing the best basketball of the year when it came down to the playoffs.
And here Tennessee gets beat. So every time you predict something, it doesn't come out that way all the time. Let the teams decide it. We've got two No. 1s and two No. 2s. You're going to have great basketball, and hopefully they will not be double digit games like we've had in the regionals -- except if we're on top, I hope they're double digit games.

Q. Coach, I'm sure the energy in the locker room is at a high right now. Can you talk about, have you ever felt so good about a 1 and 3 record against a team before?
COACH BLAIR: I feel great. But, remember, we were in all three games -- we were leading in all three games. I was the 37-minute coach. I just didn't coach well in the last three minutes, and our kids didn't make good decisions, and Baylor did. They deserved to win all three games.
But we played the socks off of them. And they know it. And I think that's one of the reasons why they didn't want to try that fourth time against us, and I think it bothered Baylor more playing us for four than it did us playing Baylor.
And I think it carried over to the attitude of the players and the coaches in that game. Whether the committee was right or wrong in seeding us together has nothing to do -- after you see it -- your job as a coach is to get your team ready, accept what they give you, and if you start trying to find cop-outs in case you lose or you don't win, it's going to play against you. It could have been the LA Lakers that was in our region. We felt we were playing good basketball, and we were ready to advance, because you were going to have to beat Baylor to win a national championship anyway sometime, somewhere.
So let's just get it on. Our kids get along very well. Both coaching staffs have tremendous respect for each other, but I think it played in our favor that we were in the Dallas Region more so than it played in Kim's favor knowing that she deserves to be in the Final Four.

Q. In the last 16 hours or so, what's the reaction been? I know you had a couple of hundred people turn out for your homecoming down in College Station, and just in terms of maybe you personally, your players, people you've heard from, has your cell phone exploded? What has the situation been like? Because obviously Notre Dame's been there before. UConn. Stanford's been there before. This is a first for your program. And second of all, if you could, you talked at length about Sydney Colson, but could you talk about the dynamic about her and Carter and especially what Carter's given you in the tournament? She seemed to hit the floor at least a dozen times last night.
COACH BLAIR: Our feeling after we left the press conferences there about 11:30, whenever we left, we went over to Dick's Last Resort where we had an Aggie reunion there until 1:00. That was special. Kids got to be with our fans and their relatives.
By the time we got back to the hotel, it's 1:15. The kids were still juiced up. My wife was dead asleep by then because she had to drive back to Arkansas, get up 4:30 to drive back to work a couple of days.
And I tried to answer e-mails. And I've never -- I'm not a high-tech person, but I had close to 200 messages and texts and phone messages to return.
I finally gave up after about 30 minutes. We got up. We left at 9:00 this morning. We got here at 12 with a police escort. It was a great feeling.
We had about 500 fans there ready to greet us. And it was very special. Now we're back in the office. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, we're going to kick ourselves in the butt unless we realize this opportunity is about playing Stanford.
We have done such a great job of preparing for this one game and not thinking about Baylor when we were playing Georgia or Rutgers or McNeese State. Our team is very good on that.
If you noticed at the end of the ballgame I called a full time-out with about a minute to go, and we were up by 11. I wanted our kids to realize, when we win this thing, we don't dog pile on the floor. Okay? Act like you've been there before. Give respect to Baylor, because they've been to Final Fours. And that's what my message was right there.
I said we'll have time to celebrate later. But why do you want to ruin your best celebration on just getting to the Final Four? If we can get to the Final Four and win the whole thing, I'll be on the top of that dog pile. Okay? Until then we've held serve.
We've worked hard. I've got a great coaching staff, and we're going to be good for years to come. So we're not a Johnny-come-lately, but probably the only thing is when you start saying the word Muffet, you know Notre Dame. Used to say Tara, that's Stanford. Geno is Geno, he owns the world out there in the East Coast. Pat is Pat. And Kim is Kim.
And Gary, they're going to say: Who dat? But if we get a chance to make a name for Texas A&M, we have more than just a football team, more than just a great band, more than just a great university. We've got a great women's basketball team and that's what we're proud of right now, and we're going up there to play what I consider the best complete team in the Final Four is Stanford for what all they have. They've already beaten Connecticut. Okay? They're very good.
Geno has the chance to go for three in a row. Muffet knows exactly how to play Geno. She's played him three times already. So she'll have the same case that Kim and I had.
So there's a whole lot of different scenarios going on. But give Texas A&M a legit chance, and I hope all announcers keep predicting us to lose -- just like they did back in '98 -- and maybe we'll prove a few of them wrong.

Q. I have to ask you about one of your girls, Tyra White, one of our girls here. I know you talked about her a lot being that homesick injured freshman, and now she's made that 180-degree turn. If you could just comment on her evolution as a person and a player at Texas A&M.
COACH BLAIR: She might be our most consistent player we've had all year. Like last night I think she had nine rebounds and 10 points or something like that. She hit a couple of the key shots for us. She was a little bit of a decoy for us early because we were running some set plays for Sydney Carter, felt like we could get her open, and then we would go back to Tyra because we felt like she could beat Melissa Jones off the bounce.
But she's the quietest kid on our team. She was one that was very much responsible for that little zone that we played that we've only practiced it one or two times that we put in in the second half. We were going try it for a couple of possessions. But Tyra was responsible for leaving the high post to come down and front the low post when it was going to go into Griner. So you had 6'1" on one side behind her and a six foot in front of, her even though she was 6'8", we were very active and into the passing lanes pretty good.
And they just kept reversing the ball, still trying to get the ball into Griner every time. Sometimes you've got to go to other options. You've got other girls on scholarships that are very good players, and sometimes, besides Melissa Jones, no one else was attacking.

Q. Listening to this telephone conference, I sensed a little defiance in your voice. Do you feel that your program has been slighted nationally when it comes to attention, press, expectations?
COACH BLAIR: No. I believe we've gotten everything that we really deserve. It's just other teams have been there and have stayed there all year. Even though we've been in the top eight all year, we started No. 8. We're No. 8 right now. Now we're in the Final Four. But nobody's left that group.
You've still got Stanford, Connecticut, Notre Dame. It's been about where we've been anywhere from 9 to 6 or something like that all year, and we're good teams.
We've enjoyed being under the radar just a little. But we should be under the radar. I believe until you get to the Final Four, you haven't really earned it. You've always been sort of the trendy team that everybody wants to pick but cannot get over that hump of getting there.
Now that we're there, now if you really want to get that national experience and get more television dates and maybe get more national recruits to come your way, you need to win a couple of these things. Just like what Geno has done with 7 and Pat with 8 and Muffet with 1. Gary would like to get 1 now. This gray hair is still gray. I don't want it to turn white.
And I'm not planning on coaching as long as Joe Paterno. So if it's our time this year. We're going to be good next year. We're going to be very good next year. But we lose Danielle Adams and I lose Sydney Colson, but I've got great replacements coming in. Do it now.

Q. And then one more, and that is in a sort of -- you touched on some of Stanford's strengths, but when coaching staff's finally got around to sitting down and looking at film on them, how do you approach them in terms of game planning? Is there something you want to try to take away from them? They present a lot of promise because they pretty much have athleticism and scoring in every position.
COACH BLAIR: I think that's the difference between Stanford from back when they won it back in the '90s about three years, they had a lot of the A-Z type kids that could do things, but now the game's become so much more athletic.
And I think Tara has changed with that. She went and got the two sisters who are tremendous rebounders, as well as finishers. They play both ends of the court better now. They're more of a complete team. Even though they won three national championships with a great team, it's harder to win one now because of the athleticism you see in the NCAA Tournament.
And I think she's changed with the times. I think Pat Summitt did that back in the '80s. She used to have very good teams that would always lose to a Louisiana Tech or Old Dominion or USC. She changed. She got more athletic, and look at what she's done for the next 20 years.
She's become very good. I think Tara is doing the same thing. They've got another great freshman point guard coming in next year from Texas, Amber Orrange, who will be a very good player for them. And I just wish they'd stay out of my state. She knows where the good recruits are. And there's a lot of kids that want to go to Stanford, not just because of the basketball, but because of the academics and being that whole total student-athlete.

Q. Just wanted to ask you, Carter was the most outstanding player in that regional which had Brittney Griner and Danielle Adams and a ton of other talented players. Just talk about what she gives you. You said you recruited her as a combo guard. She was hitting big shots, hitting the floor, doing an awful lot of different things for you during the regional.
COACH BLAIR: It was the first ballgame ever that we have ever had Sydney Carter or Sydney Colson play for 40 minutes. I've got capable kids coming off the bench, but when you have so many time-outs in the ballgame, your kids have a chance to rest a little bit more.
And I said this is our chance. We'll go with who brought us to the dance. We run so many little sets. She's got a step-back move that she works. It's not quite as good as Brittany Chambers of K-State, those kids that have that great move, but she's not afraid to draw the foul. She will go straight at you.
You are talking about the perfect build for a basketball player, whether she was 5'6" or 6'4". I mean, this kid is just built. She can be a model. She could be anything she wanted to.
And you are talking about a kid that's just fun to be around. Every day she brings it. In practice and in games she brings it. And in the press room. How could you not fall in love with a Carter or Colson in the press room?
They're the ones that are going to give you the good quotes. They're going to be the ones that give the compliments back to the other team.
And Sydney Carter is just that type of player that's going to throw it out there on the line, everything. Baylor's got their Melissa Jones. We've got our Sydney Carter. And I'm sure Stanford would say it's Pohlen for them.
Those are the kids that win championships for us, the kids that the coaches can depend on. They will play through being tired. They'll make the best decisions, and they want the ball in crucial situations.
So no matter how small Carter is, she's still going to find a way to get her shot off. If she can't get her shot off, she'll set somebody else up.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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