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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: IOWA CITYMarch 21, 2015Katie MeierAdrienne MotleyJessica ThomasIOWA CITY, IOWA COACH MEIER: Whoever made this tournament, these four teams, offense, offense, offense, so unbelievable games yesterday. Unbelievable ball movement, great coaching, and so you know, you game plan for a Washington team that you just can't believe how talented they are on the offensive end and their ability to make plays and make shots and how they put the ball in the right player's hand at the right time. And then you win that game, you celebrate for about half an hour, and then you start watching Iowa and you're like, my God, all right, well, here's another team that knows exactly where the ball should go, plays at a serious pace. Everybody takes gutsy shots on their team. I think that's the thing I love the most about them is that they have such guts, and the dagger shot doesn't just come from one person. I mean, Dixon's dagger (ph) is pretty darned impressive. But there's a lot of people on the team who will take the big shot and step up. Yeah, nobody backs down; nobody hesitates. So the bags under my eyes are well earned, and we've got a lot of work to do. But it should be an awesome game. Q. Iowa has been an average to below average team rebounding this year. Is that something you feel that you can exploit tomorrow? JESSICA THOMAS: Every game, we've got to come out and make sure we put a body on everybody on the rebounding end, that's defensive, offensive. We see Iowa has a lot of size in the paint, so as a team, it's just going to be a total effort of beating every board, boxing out and getting our run‑outs. ADRIENNE MOTLEY: I agree with Jessica. They have a great amount of size, and just making sure, like she said, finding a body and securing the rebounds. I think every game, that's pretty much the game plan, so can't say this is a specific game where we focus on it. I think every game we should focus on that. Q. For both of you, Iowa has not lost at home yet this season. To be able to come in here and have to face that kind of environment, how prepared do you guys feel for that, especially with what you guys were able to do in the ACC this season? JESSICA THOMAS: I feel like you go back to the game we played Louisville at home, it was a crazy environment. I mean, we are back in it. Hopefully we can take that, come together as a team and just take on whatever comes in front of us. ADRIENNE MOTLEY: I think any away game in the ACC can be comparable to playing here. Playing at Duke‑‑ I think she forgot about, we played at Cameron; again, playing at Louisville, playing at Pitt, playing at Carolina last year. I think we do pretty well with playing away games. But we just have to focus and play Miami basketball. Q. Obviously Katie touched on watching some of the film already. What have you guys seen about what Iowa can do and the pace? Again, it's going to be more basketball which you like, but what have we seen from Iowa already? JESSICA THOMAS: On the offensive end, they can score from anywhere on the floor. You know, they have threats in the post, they have threats on the perimeter, and they have a shooter that ‑‑ in particular, Dixon, but you know, they have got shooters all around the perimeter. So we've got to lock down our defense and make sure we take every stop serious. ADRIENNE MOTLEY: Again, they can shoot the ball ridiculously well point‑blank period. They are a great‑shooting team and we just have to be grounded on defense. We can't play lackadaisical. We have to know where our man is at all times. Coach was saying we have to hold our own pretty much this game. I know we have been relying‑‑ not relying, but we have help side, or rail as we call it, but this game we really have to hold our own on the defensive end. Q. With Iowa's ability to score, do you plan to try to get into a track meet with them and try to out‑score them or do you hope to shut them down as best you can and make it more of a defensive game? COACH MEIER: Great question but we're not going to give the game plan away just yet. (Laughter). Q. You talked about Iowa's guts. Could you expand on that? COACH MEIER: Well, it's the games you watch, and who hits the money shot, who is their gamer, what are very going to do. You watch the Big Ten Tournament and they run an out‑of‑bounds play beautifully executed and it's Doolittle. And then they run must‑shot (ph), they are going to run Dixon off some screens. And then Samantha Logic is responsible for half the team's points. I mean, if you literally break her down, she has 15 points in a game, she has nine assists in their conference games; and half of those assists are three‑pointers so you're talking about 20, 21 points right there. So you're talking about 36 points from one player. So obviously it starts and ends with her, but then she puts the ball where it needs to go in those moments and has every ability to find‑‑ she makes some passes that you don't see a lot of females be able to make, because of her strength, because of her balance. You might choose who you might leave open and I think she's probably going to be a step ahead of most coaches in that category. She's going to find what you leave open. Q. Just to get back to the environment that you guys are going to face tomorrow; here a couple years ago, what do you think some of the older players have taken from that, and obviously the ACC experience you hope everyone can use tomorrow. COACH MEIER: I said this my first press conference here. The crowd is a smart crowd. I mean, they are a disruptive crowd. They know when to get loud. They celebrate a dag (ph) for three as well as any crowd does in the country. We love it. I love it for women's basketball and I love it for Lisa. I mean, she's built this program and she's a great, great lady and she deserves this kind of support. So I'm happy to be here. It's not going to be a negative for us, but it did‑‑ it can be very rattling, especially when they go to some of their traps and stuff and you're trying to communicate with your players. I remember that from two years ago, we were here, and players are far away from you, you're trying to communicate and they are throwing some traps at you, and so we have to prepare for that, as well. Q. Does the offensive preparation that your folks had for Washington, does that translate into what you have to accomplish here today? COACH MEIER: For what we needed to score? Yes, I'm glad we scored 86 last night (laughs) because there are some obvious ways, philosophical choices that you have to make in playing Iowa. If one of them is okay, don't yell at your defense too much, just score on the other end, don't have that hangover, that's definitely one of them. They are great. They are going to score. So we do have to answer with some points, as well. Q. Considering how the last week of the regular season went, I think I saw that yesterday they needed that; they needed to see that they could put 86 together; that it wasn't just Mot. How much did they need that just to be able to see that they were back on track and to feel like they were playing good basketball after those three tough, tough losses, which were also good basketball. COACH MEIER: In the ACC tournament, our first game against Virginia, we had great looks; we didn't hit them, but our defense held. I thought the Notre Dame game is actually where we freed ourselves up, got our dandy back, got our pace back. And when you do that against Notre Dame, you feel good about losing against almost anybody. And forget about them, I needed it (laughing). I missed them. It's nice to have them back. No, they are a great group and they will do whatever you need them to do. But I thought last night, our offensive balance, Motley was very impressive but throughout the game; maybe you noticed or not, I thought throughout the game: Oh, my God, Mot's on fire. She was hitting very rhythm shots. I thought it was a quiet 30, if that ever has happened before. But I know Shelly Woods was being aggressive on the offensive end; and Nicole Sterling kept us in the first half; and Jessica Thomas with a bit of foul trouble coming off the bench and giving us that spark was huge. You know, I see it every day in practice so it's just‑‑ you're right. Showing up in the game and a big stage like that was huge for us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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