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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: TEMPEMarch 21, 2015Gary BlairCourtney WalkerCourtney WilliamsTEMPE, ARIZONA UALR – 69 THE MODERATOR: Coach Blair is joined by Courtney Williams, Courtney Walker. COACH BLAIR: Folks, appreciate the coverage. I'm sorry we didn't give you an A‑game today. Arkansas Little Rock did. They were the best team on the floor. It had nothing to do with injuries or missed shots or whatever. Right now they're playing better basketball than us. That's all on me as the head coach. My job is to get my team playing better, more cohesive, our offensive sets better, and not let a team shoot 52 percent in the second half, like they did. When we fought back in the first half we played so poorly, except for about five minutes, and I thought we had weathered the storm. We came out and traded baskets with them for an while, but eventually it just happens, they were cutting, moving to the ball. We were dead tired. We couldn't guard their three ball, because basically we were too tired to get to it. They were doing a great job of running their motion and we've got to do a better job of getting our kids in better basketball shape and being able to do the little things. But right now, really applaud Coach Foley and his 700th win. It seems like I'm making a lot of my best friends happy this year because this happened about two or three times and hopefully we can put a stop to it. This basketball team up here, you're look at them, we're all back next year, and we're going to be better than ever. But to do this the commitment has got to start from the head coach first and these three young ladies up here, because they're the answer. We've got to look ourselves in the mirror and find out what are we going to do to become a top ten basketball team again. Maybe getting kicked in the butt and slapped around a little is going to be good for us, because we're going to get on that practice court as soon as we take a week or so off and try to get better and find the answer. But, again, appreciate the coverage. It was good. Again, commend Coach Foley, his team, Taylor Gault was by and far the best player on the floor. It wasn't even close. Williams did a good job on her birthday trying to carry us, because we didn't have much going anywhere else. And so sometimes she was having to take some shots because she wanted it so bad, sometimes she would force them. Sometimes they were not going. We had a well called ballgame. Little Rock played well. They had a lot to do with us not playing well. Q. Courtney Walker, could you talk about, you seemed like you never got your shooting touch today, could you talk about why your game wasn't coming to you today? COURTNEY WALKER: It's hard to get going today. Q. Courtney Williams, you were trying to do so much in the first half, did that take a lot out of you, talk about your game, when he took you out for a rest, looked like you were awful tired at that point. COURTNEY WILLIAMS: Well, I think I was completely dead. I think the offense that Arkansas ran, they had a lot of movement and you had to do a lot of thinking real quick. It could be mentally tiring, but you have to hook it up. And we didn't really have it today. But I think we could get a little bit better shape. We have to practice harder during practice and we have to go through practice and be mentally tough enough in practice to finish our games like this. Q. Courtney Walker, could you speak about the troubles today? COURTNEY WALKER: It seemed like it was easy for her. She would come off, she was always ‑‑ she was ‑‑ we just had to give good health, and she was taking all her shots today. Q. Talk about dissecting their man to man defense. Could you talk about what they were able to do that maybe other teams weren't able to do to stop your offense? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: I think because I penetrated more, trying to get back in the game and just taking care of the ball. As for me, I need to ‑‑ I needed to make better reads in the defense, getting the ball to the post at the right time. But they did a very good job of taking away the paint. Q. Courtney Williams, where did you feel your team was at halftime? COURTNEY WILLIAMS: I think we were playing really good defense at the end of the first half. I think that's why we got our defense. And the second half we let them shoot more. I think if we would continue to play good defense like we did at the end of the first half I think we would have been just fine. Arkansas, they played well on the offense. They were making big clutch shots. We weren't tough enough to defend that. Q. Gary, you mentioned without Jordan your bench was not as deep. You did look a little tired, and you mentioned it. Any idea on why at this point you felt your team might have been a little tired? COACH BLAIR: They've been off for two weeks. Haven't played a game in two weeks. There's no excuse. There's no excuse. That's on me. If my team is tired that means I looked tired and that means I wasn't getting the job done. That's the head coach's job. Our energy has been good for practices and the whole nine yards. Just look at it, Walker had zero rebounds, it didn't even look like she was a senior out there. That killed us right there. We don't have our best energy player. Gault not only guarded Walker and shut her down in the first half, then she shut down Williams in the second half. Okay, 5‑8 guarding 6‑1 down there. We were turning corkscrew shots up instead of face planting her, because Gault is not known for her defense, she's known for her offence. But like it is, we turned the kid into an All‑American today and I'm happy for her. Six out of thirteen from the three, we hadn't given that all year, but we were too tired to chase them. I had no other point guard to put in. Walker was struggling when she went in. When we got the ball inside we had great looks. We didn't get all the finishes we wanted. 26 minutes, 10 rebounds, 9 points, no turnovers, but still, it's better numbers than a lot of my so‑called veterans had. So we've got to do a better job, that's the bottom line. Q. Coach, you mentioned that their motion kind of tired you guys out. But the way they played defense, that had to have an effect on it, too, it's like they had you on both ends of the floor, right? COACH BLAIR: Their defense is a great help defense because of their lack of size. When we had our people open inside we didn't finish when we got the ball in and couldn't get to the foul line enough. That's on us. And we had enough touches in there. We still outscored them 30 to 24 in the paint. But you've got to score on some of those offensive boards, then you've got to be able to turn them over. You've got an assist turnover ratio ‑‑ we were 13‑12. Q. In the second half, both teams were struggling. Then Gault hit a three pointer to go up by six. It looked like you couldn't believe that shot, because your defense had been so good, but the last second shot was there, and she did it a couple of times? COACH BLAIR: Yeah, the thing that was hurting us in the first half, they were taking us down to the end and I think Curtyce put one in to help us. But that was Walker and Williams not creating, and throwing it to somebody with one second to go on the clock. Gault creates her shots. What we've got to do ‑‑ that shot clock is going down, they better be able to shoot, and we didn't get it done. Q. Did you think that if you kind of pulled her down on the perimeter, that would take away things that worked for them in the tournament or was that a big focus today? COACH BLAIR: She hit the one shot that hurt us when we were dead tired, she had an open look, we couldn't get to it. We had a couple of kids that ran into a lot of screens instead of avoiding screens. You know they are coming. We worked on it a bunch. Dawn's a nice little player, but it just wasn't her day. And it wasn't ‑‑ all of a sudden you have other players step up. When he went to his bench, his bench delivered, outscored us 24‑10. We played Scott and Chelsea Jennings a lot of minutes, but they couldn't guard her, because Walker sure couldn't, we were trying to put Walker off on somebody else, and I thought we did a decent job on dawn. Cobbins didn't hurt us. Dawn didn't hurt us. But my gosh, Gault and Clark, that's all it takes right there. They played very well. I think they'll have a great chance against the winner of this ballgame coming in. I'd love to see them advance. Thank you for the tournament, it was very well run. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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