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March 10, 2015
ROSEMONT, ILLINOIS
DePaul – 78
Seton Hall - 68
COACH BRUNO: Any championship is always about the players, and I just really‑‑ every team and every group of players in America starts working very hard last April, and you have to make this happen, and I've been blessed to coach players that are really hard‑working, that are really intelligent and really have a sense of purpose. So I was just really proud of my players for understanding and the travails of what it takes to win a regular season championship, understanding how to overcome the injury of an all Big East player and the loss of Megan Rogoski; understanding that when you get waxed twice by the same team, it's a really good team, the Seton Hall team is a really good basketball team, and they've had a really great year, and they just really have great players and their staff does a great job.
For us to come out and be able to beat a team of this quality tonight, I'm just really proud of the players, and it always comes back to the players, and I'm just representing them, Megan and Chanise, but it's just about these players that I'm blessed to coach at DePaul University.
Q. After losing to this team twice this year, once on the road after an exhausting Friday night game at St.John's and then a heartbreaker at home, how does it feel to get over the hump and beat this team?
CHANISE JENKINS: I would say it feels great. A total team effort today by the team. We sort of went into this game focused, and we know that Seton Hall was hungry to beat us a third time, so it was great that we came out focused and ready to play this time.
MEGAN PODKOWA: First two times that we played them, our defense wasn't there and our rebounding wasn't there, so I think we all came in ready to play and ready to rebound and defend against them tonight.
Q. Seton Hall has come back against you guys in both of those losses early in the season. Now you guys go up again. What was the difference this time around that allowed you to stay in the lead?
MEGAN PODKOWA: Coming out of every time‑out we would all huddle up and be like, remember they did this to us before. We`ve been up by 12, and this has happened before, so we really had to stick to our defense and rebounding and make sure we get the job done. We can't let them back in the game.
CHANISE JENKINS: Yeah, just add to that, I think Brittany did a great job of huddling us up every time she could and getting us refocused, even though like they will score a basket and then we come back down and we`re like they can't score again, we have to get a stop and then get a rebound and come down and get a score. I think the leadership from Brittany Hrynko the entire game was key for us.
Q. How does it feel having an NCAA bid locked up and not having to wait until next Monday?
MEGAN PODKOWA: It feels awesome.
CHANISE JENKINS: It's a relief knowing we don't have to sit there wondering if our name is going to pop up or not.
Q.  Chanise, you guys open up the first half 15‑3 run, second half I believe 13‑4 run. You guys had your foot on the gas pedal the entire game. What was it like to feel that offense clicking like that?
CHANISE JENKINS: It just felt great. Like I said already, we just came out ready and focused, and I don't know, we know that we had an early lead and a lead coming out of halftime, but we just had to keep huddling up and keep focusing. We can`t let them come back into the game because Seton Hall is really great and they`re really good at coming back ini games like this. We just had to keep our foot on the pedal.
Q. Megan, your past two games, 22 last night, 19 tonight, do you have a certain feeling coming into this tournament or do you credit your teammates for how well you played offensively?
MEGAN PODKOWA: It's definitely all for my teammates. I mean, I feel I was getting a lot easy lay‑ups, wide open threes, and the guards really doing a great job of getting me the ball. Also some of the other girls scoring like T.T. stepping up and hitting those threes opened up more opportunities for all of us, so it was a really good team effort.
Q. Coach, you sat here last night and you said‑‑ you talked about Richardson‑Smith and how much respect you have for her, and I think that showed tonight. You were all over her. You shut her down.
COACH BRUNO: Well, the defensive approach was a total face guard, and I think for a player to earn the right to be totally taken out‑‑ you can take out a player, and that's one player assigned to her without giving help, but a total face guard is the ultimate. Your player that's guarding her has got no other responsibilities than to just guard her. We just put somebody in her chest the entire game, and we were just trying to reduce her touches.
Q. Coach Bozzella told us before you got here that he told his team before the game to keep you folks out of the paint. Could you talk about your game plan if you're able to in terms of attacking tonight?
COACH BRUNO:  You know, we have a very excellent group of players. We try to put the players in position to have different ways to attack, so as their coach, I always want them to have the confidence of being able to score. We know what to do defensively. That's pretty standard. You've got to put them in position to score.
We tried a lot of different things. The Seton Hall defense against the ball screen tonight was really jamming us up. We weren't getting anything out of the ball screens. So we opened the floor up, and we have players that can play with the floor opened up. We have our spread DePaul offense that we can run at any time, and we make our players learn that before they can step on the floor as freshmen.
I think it's my job as a head coach to always have answers for defense, and I think your question earlier about the pedal on the metal, you might have thought so and the players might have thought so, but I thought we were stuck on 31 for about an hour, and I thought we were stuck on 55 for about an hour. So when you get stuck on during a game, it's when your game kind of sputters, and I thought we got stuck on 31 in the first half and 55 in the second half, and I was glad to see our players respond.
But it's all the players. Chanise Jenkins, Brittany‑‑ I'm glad Chanise talked about Brittany because for a Player of the Year to come in and have a really good, solid tournament, but not necessarily the glamour numbers or the celebrated numbers that she had on the season, and still have major impact on the game‑‑ I thought she had major impact on the game last night, I thought she had major impact on the game tonight, and that's what this sport is all about.
To be able to have major impact, the tables‑‑ the game was reversed tonight. The unsung hero for the season is Centrese McGee, and she comes out ‑‑ at halftime I`m looking at the stat sheet, we`re shooting 53 percent. All right, our big three, our three potent guards, Chanise, Brit and Jess, are 5 for 17, and we're shooting 53 percent. Centrese McGee has got nine points and hasn't missed a shot. Brittany made herself really, really functional tonight, even though she wasn't having her best scoring night. She did the same last night. I think that's really key.
Q. What is it like just winning back‑to‑back championships right on your home court in Allstate Arena?
COACH BRUNO: Well, first of all, when you talk about the tournament, I want to thank the Big East for running the tournament. I want to thank our administration for running the tournament. I want to thank the village of Rosemont. This is a great place to have a tournament, and I'll guarantee‑‑ I'd better not say that right now. But at the same time it's not our home court. This is not our home court. This is totally a neutral court when it comes to the court. There's more fans for us, so in that way it's not neutral. But this is a neutral court. I'm thrilled that we're able to win the tournament, first of all, win the regular season championships so our seniors can go out with four championships. I'm just really proud of them, and that's really the major focal point. And then the next facet to it or the next factor to it is we've been doing this for 40 years. There's a lot of people in this rooms that have been working very hard their whole lives to grow the game of women`s basketball. And we`re really thankful to all the people that show up, but the sport is just too good and we believe in it too much, and we just‑‑ I really dream and envision and believe that there`s going to be a day where we step on this court and I'm going to look up into all those corners and see the same thing that I saw when I was out here watching the great men's games of yesteryear pack this joint, and that's my vision for women's basketball, not just here.
I guess I'm really proud of what's gone on here at this tournament, but at the same time, we've still got miles to go. We're just all working very hard to get people to watch this great sport.
Q. At what point were you able to exhale in this game and realize that you won?
COACH BRUNO: When you choose to do what I do for a living, I never exhale. Really, I mean, I think the only way to approach coaching, I really believe this, is to coach every possession‑‑ if I coach every possession like it's the only possession, and I coach every possession to win every possession, and I think I can lead my players to play every possession like it's the only possession, so I don't exhale at all. We're still fouling, we're still committing stupid fouls with a minute and 14 seconds to go, and there's too many crazy things that happen in basketball. I never exhale. I exhale probably with about 14 seconds, 16 seconds to go, I finally figured out that I could say to the kids on the bench, thanks for helping us win this championship, and we're going to put you in for a little curtain call in the starting five. That's 16 seconds to go. So I never exhale. Can't exhale.
Q. Coach Bozzella talked a little bit about how some of their players were kind of nervous going into this game. How much do you think the experience of being there last year and winning the tournament helped DePaul win tonight?
COACH BRUNO: Well, you know, our players are veteran players, but so are coaches. I really can't speak to Seton Hall. I think they're great players, great talent, and I think Tony does a great job. Yeah, nerves, at this point in time when you're a fifth‑year senior like two of these great guards are, you need to‑‑ I can't really speak to it. I just really don't want to be quoted on that.
Nerves are‑‑ I talk to my players all the time about anxiety before games. I expect our players to be anxious before games. We try to put our players in a place of execution anxiety versus result anxiety, and I think if I can keep my players in a execution anxiety place versus result anxiety‑‑ because you can't play a sport and be a quality, high‑profile, high‑level athlete without anxiousness before the competition. I just think it's how you channel the anxiousness, and I don't think the experience‑‑ I think the experience that helped us is this year's experience when we got‑‑ we had Notre Dame on the ropes and beat and didn't finish the job, and I really think the non‑conference schedule that we played at our highest end, UConn, Notre Dame, A&M, and then Northwestern`s rank‑‑ I mean, our seven losses, I'm going to repeat all the time until I`m blue in the face that of our seven losses, six of them were against ranked basketball teams, and the seventh one was against `Nova the night we lost Rogoski. I think that's where our players learned the difference between execution anxiety and result anxiety, for the experience of that.
I don't know that it's these tournaments that do that as much as this‑‑ because it's a new team. The DePaulia wrote a commentary that this team isn't any good. I'm just saying, I'm not talking about you. Whoever wrote the editorial‑‑ last time we lost to Seton Hall we were written off, remember? It was also pointed out that we couldn't win this tournament because we couldn't rebound. You said we were 244th in the nation. Nobody said we were second in the nation in scoring, second in the nation in assists, second in the nation in‑‑ I love you guys. I really love the DePaulia, I really do. I think we're really raising great journalists in America, so God bless you.
Q. The last two games Megan Podkowa has played as well as I've seen her all season inside down low. Talk about the impact of that on your team and how that bodes well for you going into the tournament.
COACH BRUNO: You know, this team is different because Jas Penny graduated. Jas Penny was an undersized post. We're a small basketball team to begin with, so if you can get some kind of inside play from anybody, you're going to be a better basketball team. People have the misconception that's all we want to do is shoot threes. The reason we shoot threes is to spread the floor so we can get great kids who can slash to the basket openings and kids that can post up space. That`s what the three‑point shot is there for.
I'm just really proud of Megan for finally stepping up and taking over some ownership in the paint. We've been on Megan all year to want the ball in the paint, and I think she really did last night, and again, this is Brit‑‑ the only crunch time last night, she needed the ball and Brit helped get her the ball, and I thinks that`s ‑‑ it continued tonight. We've really worked hard all year to develop a post game. We really Brandi Harvey‑Carr played in every game for 25 consecutive games, a lot of valuable minutes, and yet we were trying to work Brandi into that spot and trying to get Brandi to take ownership of that spot. Now it's crunch time and we've got to use what's‑‑ and Megan has got to be that player, Mart`e Grays has got to be that player, Centrese McGee. We've just got to scramble and do what we can do.
Q. Seton Hall talked highly of your defense tonight. Just what in particular worked on defense?
COACH BRUNO: When you score the ball as much as we do at DePaul and shoot the ball as frequently as we do, it becomes a common thought that we don't defend. And when you shoot the ball fast and shoot the ball‑‑ you can't score a lot of points if you don't shoot the ball quickly. If you shoot the ball quickly, it looks often like you're not defending. I just think that tonight we still ended up with 70 points, and if we made some free throws down the stretch like we normally do ‑‑ our best free‑thrower was on the free‑throw line down the stretch, we would probably have ended up with 84, 85 points, right there where our average is, about 87, in a tempoed game, in a game in which we weren't quick shooting. We thought that offense and defense are interrelated in this sport, so we really thought it was important for us to have to make Seton Hall guard us for extended periods of time, and that would actually help us on the defensive end. But taking and shutting‑‑ putting a take‑out player on Richardson‑Smith was important. I think that was key. Not letting Johnson get off for four threes like we did in Game 2, that was important. In Game 1 we beat Seton Hall in Game 1 87‑85. We beat their ‑‑ three guards had 85 and we had 87, so the three guards at Seton Hall had 85 points against us out at Seton Hall. We put them on the free‑throw line 30 times at Seton Hall. So we just had much more defensive purpose, cleanliness, persistence, relentlessness, and the game plan was a really good solid game plan.
My assistants are great game planners. Candis Blankson had the scout but once I start talking about scouts, I'm going to miss somebody. Jill Pizzotti had last night`s scout, but the takeout factor of Richardson‑Smith was huge and not letting Johnson get off. You're not going to stop them all. Dee Dee is the player that we voted on for her‑‑ we voted her Player of the Year, and Richardson‑Smith we voted very high, second or third, I'm not sure exactly which. And Daisha can get to the rim all night. I thought our help defenders did a good job, the kids that were in position to help did a good job of helping. So it was a great team defensive effort.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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