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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2015Doug BrunoBrittany HrynkoMegan PodkowaROSEMONT, ILLINOIS DePaul – 58 COACH BRUNO: Villanova and Coach Perretta do a really good job. He's one of the best coaches in college basketball, and had they not had injuries early in the season and started on the road, they'd be in contention for an NCAA berth. That's a really good basketball team once they got whole. People ask me all the time why don't you get them into our tempo. We can get them into our tempo, but to get them into our tempo, I have to give up some things that I don't want to give up in playing against them. So we've been playing them this way since we got into the Big East, and it doesn't give our fans the 80‑ and 90‑point game, but it does give them a little bit of drama, especially the way we finished tonight. I thought it was really important that Brittany Hrynko here, who wasn't having necessarily one of her signature games, did a real good job of understanding down the stretch that Megan Podkowa was our go‑to player at that point and did a great job of helping us get the ball to Megan and Megan answered the bell. Coach Harry was trying to isolate around Megan, and I thought Megan did a great job of accepting that challenge and still coming back the other way, and I thought Brit led the team to getting Megan the ball and then Megan answered down low. So I thought that was very, very key and very important. Our team this year has lost only to ranked teams, and Villanova once on the night that we lost Megan Rogowski. This team that's sitting here at 25‑7 has only had one defeat to a non‑ranked basketball team, and the ranked teams that have beaten us, only Connecticut blew us, and yet they blew us with a 34‑‑ they didn't beat us a lot more than they beat No.1 South Carolina, so UConn is really pretty good. I just want to make a point here that we've had a lot of experience this year in close games. Notre Dame, we had beat, and it was a close game that took it to overtime; Northwestern, double overtime; Villanova overtime, so I just hope the experience that we had in all these close games is going to bode well as we move into March, which is all about nothing but close games. Again, it's always the players. The players won the game tonight. I'm really proud of my basketball team that we're going to survive to play a very, very good Seton Hall team tomorrow night for the Big East championship. Q. Coach talked about it a little bit where you all kind of played the floor with tempo. When you're so used to playing a high, fast tempo, how much of an adjustment is that? MEGAN PODKOWA: Well, I don't really feel like there's much of an adjustment for me because I'm in the backcourt of it, and I'm never really the one run that's running around chasing the ball, so I think this might be a question for Brittney. BRITTANY HRYNKO: I don't think it's that much of a difference. We still up the court, we still have pressure on the ball. We're still doing what we're usually doing.  So I guess it's just a matter of how fast we're going. Q. You guys were here last year, making it all the way to the Big East final. You guys come back again. How does that experience help when playing these really close games, then getting tired legs going into tomorrow? BRITTANY HRYNKO: Just having the experience, I guess, is good for us, but at the same time we can't just come into the game just thinking we're going to win. We have to come in with the same energy and just keep playing hard. Us and Seton Hall both had tough games, so both our legs are going to be tired, but it's just a matter of coming in ready to play. MEGAN PODKOWA: Yeah, I definitely think the experience from last year has helped so far and, like she said, come in prepared for tomorrow. We can't get overexcited. We have to come ready and have the same energy that we had tonight . Q. Knowing that you were going to get the ball down the stretch, what was your offensive mindset during that time? MEGAN PODKOWA: I'm definitely trying to be more aggressive with every game. I think it was just either get the ball in or get it back out if I was double teamed or my teammates. Like Coach Bruno said, all the guards did a great of getting me the ball. They found me on the three, found me inside, so I have to credit it all to the guards. Q. Brit, when you were out there playing, you're missing shots, what's going through your head as you come back in the second half? We saw kind of your facial expression after getting two quick fouls, going into halftime what did Coach say to you or your teammates say to you? BRITTANY HRYNKO: Nothing, just me staying focused. Coach never says nothing to me when I'm missing shots, it's just a matter of me staying focused, not getting down on myself, and my teammates telling me to keep playing, I got it, just keep shooting the ball. I wasn't making lay‑ups so I was getting mad at myself, but at the same time my teammates were, like, Brit, stay focused, you got it, you're going to make the next one. So it was just a matter of them keeping me up and myself ‑‑ keeping myself together. Q. And Megan, on a low block coach is calling your number, the ball was coming in. You had like an array of moves down low. Do you still ‑‑ like looking ahead to Seton Hall like that's something you want to do, establish yourself on the low block or it is more of stretching out and trying to get the players to come out on you and open up the driving lanes for some of your guards? MEGAN PODKOWA: I definitely prefer to play on the perimeter, but I do think I'll have to do a little bit of both. Definitely I'll have to get out to the three‑point line and open up so that the big girl has to come out and guard me and our guards can go drive and get some people in foul trouble maybe. But I also have to have a presence in the post. I don't think we really had too much of that in the last two Seton Hall games, so I need to get in there and use some of those moves to try to score inside. Q. You folks didn't come out until halftime until there were three minutes and 20 seconds left on the halftime clock. What did you talk about at halftime? COACH BRUNO: We understand how to play Villanova and we understand that it's a grind, and that's a tribute to Coach Perretta, and believe me, if we could turn this into an 80 pointer we would, but it's just not that easy to do. We just talked about grinding it out, talked about winning a half‑‑ having to win the next second half, and talking about just staying strong and staying mentally focused. Nothing major. We talked offensively about finding offensive answers. I always say it's UConn's dirty little secret how good defensively they are because they're so efficient offensively, you lose sight of how good UConn is defensively. Same thing with Villanova. They're a very good defensive team, and you really have to find answers. I thought we found some answers in the second half, so we talked about that we had to stay the course defensively and then where we were going to try to find some answers offensively in some of the things that we have in our repertoire. Q. Tomorrow you go up against Seton Hall, who you have lost twice this season. How do you plan to go in and try and guard that three‑guard attack that they've used to well? COACH BRUNO: Well, Seton Hall has had a really great year, and at the same time, I just want to first of all go on record because I know Coach Tony is telling Richardson‑Smith that none of the coaches in the league voted for her for first team, so I was using that as impetus. If you go look at the votes, I think Pam is in there somewhere. We voted her at least‑‑ I know at least two of our top threes players were ‑‑ Richardson Smith was in the ‑‑ she had 38 against us at the Hall, and she made three great stops against us defensively in Chicago, so it was one of our highest vote getters along with another Seton Hall player. So I just want to make sure that you guys all make sure that Richardson‑Smith‑‑ make sure you do that, okay, just in case you‑‑ at any rate, that's somethingthat I want to get out. They're a good team because they have three really, really good guards and those guards are really hard match‑ups and they're really hard to guard. We had a real tough game against St.John's in New York, and that was on a Friday, and then we didn't have a whole lot left in the tank on Sunday. And we probably played our worst game of the year and Seton Hall probably played one of their best games. When that happens, you get a blowout, and the blowout itself, we were still in that game. It wasn't quite like the score at the end, and so I thought we came back and had a real good game plan in Chicago, and I thought we put ourselves in position to win the game in Chicago, and then Dee Dee made a great play at the end of the game, Brit made a great shot at the end of the game, Dee Dee mad a great play at the end of the game, and you know, it's an 81‑80 basketball game. So I think we know that we can play with people as good as Seton Hall, and I think Seton Hall is a really, really good team. Having played against UConn and Notre Dame and the Texas A&M when they were whole, Seton Hall, and all ‑‑ five of five teams in our league that I guarantee you, five teams in this league would not‑‑ people in the ACC, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, PAC‑12, and Big 12 don't want to play us five. They wouldn't want us five in their league, and I'm just telling you that Seton Hall is a really, really good team. We should be prepared for it based on the schedule that we play. We played a really difficult schedule, so we should be ready. But winning three times in a row is something that isn't standard. You know how gassed everybody is, everybody is playing on fumes tomorrow night, but it's the same for both teams. Q. In anticipation of the fact that you're probably‑‑ your squad as well as Seton Hall is going to be out of gas, as you say, on fumes, do you think you'll still use your full court press? COACH BRUNO: Yeah, I really think we'll take a look at it. I'm not trying to evade the question right now, but at the same time what's going to be the wisest way to play Seton Hall is what we're going to do. I'm not one of those coaches that's really overly stubborn about‑‑ the end result is that our players have the higher score at the end of the game. Yeah, we have a system and we like to score the ball, and we like to share the ball, and we like to shoot the ball, often at the same time, whatever it's going to take to be able to defend and rebound against a very good Seton Hall team. That's going to be what we're going to do. I'm not really ready to answer the question because I'm not really sure what we're‑‑ how we're going to attack them, but I think it should be a really, really good basketball team. They have three really good guards, and so do we. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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