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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: IOWA CITYMarch 20, 2015Katie MeierAdrienne MotleyJessica ThomasIOWA CITY, IOWA MIAMI – 86 COACH MEIER: Well, I don't know that I've ever coached a game where the other team had five players in double figures and we won. But that had to be one of the funnest games to coach in that I've had in my career, and it had to be awesome for the fans and for television. I think there were 13 or 15 ties in the game. The players were just making plays. It was just a beautiful women's basketball game. I thought well executed by both teams, and just‑‑ I think when I watch it on film, I'm going to have even more film. I just thought it was amazing. And it's not like nobody choked or there was some all of moment. Everything was just really positive. Both coaches were really positive with their teams and players made plays. There were some awesome young people out there playing with toughness and guts, and I got two of them to my right here and they carried us. They were unbelievable. But I will say that if I had a third up here, I would have Michelle Woods, because her defensive effort on Kelsey Plum was as fine an effort as you're ever going to watch. Q. To be able to come into the NCAA Tournament and to put together the game that you had today, I watched a little during warm ups and it looked like you were in a zone. Did you feel going out there that you could do something like what you did today? ADRIENNE MOTLEY: I woke up from my nap after pregame and was like, I feel pretty good right now. Just going out there and getting a feel for the court. I know Coach asked mehow I felt out there, and I was just like, it feels good. I just had this kind of feeling today, and it just so happened that we came out here and we executed and I was just hitting shots. That's basically what it is. My teammates were setting me up and just talking to me as they usually do. Today it just felt different. Like I said, just a different feel. Q. (No mic). ADRIENNE MOTLEY: No. I don't think so. It was just we really needed this game and we worked so hard for it. I think everybody realized that when we play hard and when we come together, great things can happen. Q. As Coach said, you've always prided yourselves on your defense and what Michelle was able to do today; can you tell us what you were able to do with Kelsey and maybe talk about Michelle's performance in particular? JESSICA THOMAS: Shelly's performance actually is what motivated us. You see her going so hard on the backcourt and pressuring Plum, one of the best players in the Pac‑12‑‑ not the best, but you see that happening, in the backcourt, you're just, well, we've got to do our part. You're working your tail off, we've to do our part in the back. Just came down to big rebounds, big stops, big steals. All glory to Shelly; she played really well. COACH MEIER: If game time was 11:00, what time was the nap? (Laughter) All right, go to bed. Q. Would you elaborate on what your student athletes had to stay? COACH MEIER: Yeah, looking at it, I think we got 66 of our 86 points from our three starting guards, and yet that's not what we are going to talk about. It's going to be their defensive effort. Jessica was being humble, too, but she did, there's a lot of pressure on our guards to defend today and the fact that they defended with such passion and energy. And then we had 66 of our 86 points, that's got a lot to do with weight room and conditioning. We had the ten days where we really needed to get back to who we were. We were kind of limp towards the end of the season and now we're fresh again. Q. Mike talked yesterday about the pace, and your girls talked about the pace being an advantage. Those practices, that conditioning that you guys did in that ten days, if you could put into words what you saw out there and the difference it made. COACH MEIER: The last thing I said at halftime when we were walking out is, nobody's tired, nobody's hurt and nobody needs a sub. You just have to keep this mentality. There's nothing to wait around for anymore. I said, spill it out there on the court, spill it out there, you have to, and that's what they did. There's times I thought in the first half, I thought our pace was really the reason why‑‑ we had a great defensive stops at the end of the half, I think maybe 2 for 17 they went and 0 for their last 9 they had not had a field goal. I do believe that was our defense, it was the result of our offense's pace. Our defense did hold but I thought we had an advantage there. Q. Adrienne also had the big game against Notre Dame. COACH MEIER: She is somebody that her pull‑up when she goes to shoot it, the person on the bench is counting, they are already writing two as soon as she elevates, it's just so consistent. If we get ourselves in situations where get her teammates move the ball properly and we can get her in what we call downhill a little bit, she's really hard to guard. And that Notre Dame game and this game, I thought it was‑‑ they did a great job. She didn't start with the ball a lot but she sure ended up with it a little bit. Q. A big play, Davenport got the rebound after the missed free throw and kept the possession; can you just talk about that play? COACH MEIER: It was huge. It was really huge. The game was never‑‑ when they took that five‑point lead, we've had a lot of close games. We've had a lot of big‑time players make big‑time plays in our face and some are heartbreaking, sometimes we are the ones making the plays. So we have been through it and I thought nobody got rattled. I thought that was huge. But it's funny, because part of the pregame speech, I said, you know, you have the confidence; you have enough big wins, you have the resumé, but you also have the pain. You have the pain of some of these losses. You have the pain of a missed box‑out. You have the joy of getting an offensive rebound on a missed free throw, and we have won a game that way, too, and then it happened again today with Erykah. That was the joy part that we really love. It was a huge play by a freshman. THE MODERATOR: We'll let Coach get on with the business of getting prepared for Sunday. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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