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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2015Linda LappeHaley SmithJamee SwanSEATTLE, WASHINGTON Colorado – 75 THE MODERATOR: Congratulations to Colorado. We've got Coach Linda Lappe, Haley Smith, and Jamee Swan. Coach, an opening statement and then questions. COACH LAPPE: I thought it was one of our better games of the season. Really proud and happy for our team, especially our three seniors for them to play like they played and the rest of our team to really come together. I feel like we're a really close‑knit team and you could see that tonight in how we played and shared the ball offensively, how efficient our offense was and how we defended. We've talked a lot the last couple weeks about playing defense and getting stops. I thought we defended USC really, really well and really made a commitment on the defensive side of things. So just extremely excited to be moving on and get ready for the next one. Q. Can you talk about Jamee's performance tonight? It seemed like her intensity and physical play really gave you guys a spark especially early in the first half. COACH LAPPE: Yeah, I thought Jamee played like an All‑Conference player tonight. She's tough to defend down low. I thought she did a nice job of letting the game come to her at the beginning of the game. Had a great first half. We needed her to play a lot of minutes with Jen getting into some early foul trouble. She stepped up and did a nice job defensively. Really being a presence in the paint and blocking shots. On the offensive end, being a threat both on the outside and on the inside. You could see her versatility in how she plays. I thought her teammates did a nice job of getting her the ball. She always had the ball in great positions to be successful as well. Q. You probably knew that they were going to come out a little more intense in the second half, but you kept your composure, your players did for most of that time and really handled things. Is that what you had told them at halftime, to expect that kind of thing? COACH LAPPE: We talked about it was 0‑0. Didn't matter what the score was. We wanted to come out and really reset a little bit. I put our beginning things that we talked about on the board. I put those back on the board.  We talked about the same things that we talked about before the game, so just be able to reset our team. Sometimes in the second half you can get ahead of yourself and forget why you were successful in the first half. So even though they might change and we might change, you're not going to change that drastically. To be able to continue to play transition defense was huge for us. Their run in the second half was because they were getting out in transition and getting too many lay‑ups. I liked how we responded under the 12‑minute mark. I thought everybody stepped up. I thought we were in attack mode, and we were composed tonight. We were extremely focused, mentally tough, and really composed. Even when USC did make runs, we didn't let it affect us. We've been in that situation before and everybody stepped up and had a little bit more grit to them, and got a little bit more determined. Q. What about the impact that the three‑pointers had on the game? Lauren Huggins in particular. COACH LAPPE: That's funny, we were talking about that on the way over. It was a huge part of the game. Two by Lauren and one by Alina, back to back to back. It was a huge turning point to the game. We hadn't been scoring to that point very well, and that really just opened the game up and really stretched their defense out a little bit, and we were able to go back inside and get some lay‑ups. So those were three huge shots. Again, all of them were good shots out of the offense, good passes, and they were ready. They stepped up and knocked them down. Q. Haley, would you talk a little bit about your game and how comfortable you felt? HALEY SMITH: Yeah, I think what Coach just said was really just how we felt composed, letting the game come to us. We didn't need to force anything. Our offense was working really well, especially in the first half. We were able to just find open players, hit open shots. So I think really just the flow of the game was really easy. We talked about before the game just keys to success or how we could win this one. One of those was having three, four players in double figures. So when we were sharing the ball like that is when we're most successful. So I think definitely the stats really show that after this game. Q. Jamee, can you talk about your game tonight? USC is a physical team. Did you know that you were going to have to bring that physical play and match what they do? How were you able to be successful out there tonight? JAMEE SWAN: Yeah, we talked a lot this week about being tough and playing Colorado basketball. Going into this game we definitely knew it was going to be a tough game. Always Pac‑12 Tournament games are always big games. Everybody comes to play, it doesn't matter if you're a 12th seed or a 3rd seed, you're always going to bring your best. So going out there today we just needed to be tough and play as hard as we could and not let their play affect us. Q. I think you had three blocks in the first half. I don't know how many you finished with, but did you feel like those three kind of altered their presence or their mentality when they came inside? JAMEE SWAN: They kept attacking afterwards, so I would have to say kind of. They used more pump fakes in the rest of the game. So they adjusted really well. I think that I would have to say yeah, to answer your question, I think it did. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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