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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2016Mikayla CowlingPenina DavidsonLindsay GottliebSeattle, Washington Cal - 66, Utah - 63 THE MODERATOR: We welcome the Cal Golden Bears, Coach Gottlieb, Mikayla Cowling, and Penina Davidson. Coach, an opening comment and then questions. LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Thank you all for being here. We thought we'd start out with what should be an exciting Pac-12 Tournament with a lot of madness. Really grateful to be sitting up here with the win. Utah has had an incredible season and they'll continue into postseason. Lynne`s done a great job. You know, we knew what a tough opponent they'd be considering they've beaten us twice already. Extremely excited and happy for our players and proud of them. I thought Utah came out as the aggressors. Got us back on our heels and we had a gut-check time in the middle of the game, maybe somewhere around that 12 minute point, I challenged our players to just leave it out there. We don't want to go home, play hard, and that's what they did. From then on, we just needed enough minutes to catch up. I thought our aggression went up, I thought our defense was better, and players desired to make plays. It was fun to see them, talk about having a great youthful energy. But we need to add with that a little more veteran plays down the stretch here and I thought they did both of those things to get this one. Q. Coach, I want to ask you about the battle between Emily Potter and Kristine Anigwe. What did you see out of that? It seemed live up to the billing as two of the better young players in the Pac-12? LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Yeah, I think the first thing is that both of them were out in the overtimes, and I'm sure Lynne feels the same way, but I think the rest of our team said we have everything we need, which is a testament to the ability of the players on our team. Interesting that they were both out in the overtime. But I mean those are two post players that can't be guarded one-on-one. I thought that they took turns going at each other. They were the focal point of the other's defense quite a bit, and we were just fortunate that the rest of our players were able to make enough big plays. I thought Kristine came out in the second half a lot more aggressive. She did a great job on the boards, ending with 14. But when you have two really good post players like that, oftentimes it's going to come down to the other players. Q. Mikayla, can you talk about first of all the shot at the end of regulation and then the shot to win it, basically in the overtime? Can you describe those two plays, please? MIKAYLA COWLING: Well, Lindsay looked at me and needed me to knockdown and be a crucial player at the moment. She looked at me and I knew I had to step up for her and the team to be a leader at that moment. I'm lucky those shots fell. We practiced those a lot in practice. But, yeah, I was locked in and I was focused on the game plan and they went in. Q. Coach, I noticed that Mikayla's parents are here and they have the big head. I know that's kind of a normal thing or regular thing. I just want to ask what that support means to you and Mikayla and then to have that fan support on the road? LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: It's incredible. I will say in particular we have really, really good team parents. The parents of our players go through everything with us, and the Cowlings are just a gift from God. They're incredible people, the texts I've gotten from them after some of our low moments. I hope they're celebrating but I know it's going to be about the team win and not just that Mikayla made big shots. We travel with the big heads. They are staying here. We had a reception last night and their parents come, and it's a really neat community feeling. We're always happy when we get a win for the people that support us so much. MIKAYLA COWLING: They're my biggest supporters. They travel to every away game, every home game. They're super supportive. They're amazing. Having them there every game and seeing them in the stands to look at them and just to get that calm feeling all the time is everything. Q. Coach, what flipped in the second half? I mean, you guys go into the half trailing 6, but it seemed like there were kind of hiccups in Utah's offense. Was it an effort defensively? Did they just kind of slow down? How did the momentum change when you guys came out of the break? LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: I think one thing that was really key is when we weren't playing particularly well in the first half, we were still only down 6. I don't know if you guys have seen Penina play like this, but we know she's capable of it. I thought in the first half she set an incredible tone of, hey, we're not going to back down. And even though we didn't have a lead at that point, it's a very -- a margin that you can navigate it. Then coming out in the second half, we talked about being the aggressors. We talked about not letting them get any easy baskets. And it took a while to get us going, but I think there was a gut-check time somewhere midway through that. One time midway through in the third quarter and then again at 5 or 6 minutes left in the fourth, and the players just turned up the aggression level. All of a sudden 50-50 balls are going our way and we're getting more stops and making some big plays around the basket. So I think it was just kind of a moment in the second half where they were like, okay, we're not going to get pushed around anymore. Q. What was it in your team's mindset in the final minutes of regulation in the overtime not having Kristine your big gun? What did that mean to you folks? PENINA DAVIDSON: She's huge for us on and off the court. It's nice to do what you're doing on the court and look at bench and she's just as enthusiastic as she is on the court, so I think we just wanted it for her, for our team, for everyone. Q. Lindsay, I have to ask you, in view of everything that's happened to your folks this season, all the rough stuff, the turmoil, everything that you've been through how it helps you pull out a game like this? LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: I think so. I think one thing we talked about is March is craziness, there is a lot of intensity. But I'm not sure there is a team that's faced as much adversity as we have, so why not let that fuel us? And, again, because we've come a long way, we know our talent is there, but when we can add to that by executing a play at the end or coming together when it would be easier to roll over. Those are the things we've been missing and if we add that to what we know we're capable of, we do feel like this can be our time. Q. Coach, I know you guys watched the previous two games on film, but how much of a motivating factor were those first two losses to Utah, especially when you blew a 19-point lead and now you come back from a double-digit deficit in this game? LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Yeah, it's huge. We're all competitors, but anytime a team beats you twice, if they're going to beat you a third time, it means they're just the better team, and we weren't ready to accept that. I don't think we guarded them as well as we could have guarded them. Again, they have a lot of offensive weapons and they're a good team. But we really focussed on trying to defend them better, which I think that we did. I think we took some confidence from watching the film. Even though both games were sort of a one-possession game, we gave away a lot of points and lot of possessions. So that was the mindset coming in, this is in our control if we can learn from the film and play better. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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