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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2016Anthony BozzellaShakena RichardsonChicago, Illinois Creighton - 77, Seton Hall - 56 ANTHONY BOZZELLA: First of all, congratulations to Creighton. I thought they played well. I thought they played very well as the year has gone on. It's a tribute to their coaching staff and their players to lose their best player and continue to fight and do well. They made a lot of tough shots today in the first half, which gave them an eight-point lead. We couldn't make a couple of shots, and then I think that was a big part of the game. I do. Then when you get down, we cut to seven, we could never get over the hump. They made a couple of big threes. A couple things went against us that usually don't happen when we're playing the way we can, and it is what it is. We're looking forward to next Monday night and seeing where we're going in the NCAA Tournament hopefully. Q. Shakena, when you guys are cutting into that lead and you got it down to seven on a couple of occasions, you've got the full-court press going trying to speed the game up, how much of a back breaker was the lay-up by jade, the three by MC, the constant responses that they had to kind of build the lead back up? SHAKENA RICHARDSON: It's always tough when you're trying to make a run and answering it is always tough. But like he said, they just played really well. Q. Shakena, when you came into this squad, this is a team that lost four or five starters, to end up 23-8, was that something that you realistically expected for this team going into the year? SHAKENA RICHARDSON: I mean, in the beginning initially, we had a whole bunch of newcomers, so I didn't think we would click as fast as we did, as early as we did, but as we started to improve I really did see this, and I suspected we'd be exactly where we are. We came up short, but we're not done. Q. Shakena, obviously a disappointing loss. You guys wanted to make it to the championship game, but like you said, you're not done yet, so what do you take from this loss and apply it moving forward? SHAKENA RICHARDSON: I mean, we're going to go back and do our homework, watch film and see where we can improve, and just got to keep moving forward. You can't look back. It's over now. Q. Shakena, you've seen MC McGrory minus Marissa Janning three times now. What is the difference between when you guys played them in Omaha to what you saw out of her today? SHAKENA RICHARDSON: I just thought she was more aggressive. She hit shots that were tough and she got into the lane, and they just played well. It's really tough to beat a team three times and they've just got the momentum right now, and they're playing well. Congrats to them, but we just came up short, like I said. Q. You kind of talked about back in the game in Omaha just the kind of fight that Creighton has shown without some key players being injured. I guess today and really this weekend, do you think that's kind of what has given the momentum and carried them as far as how they've been able to get a couple upsets here? ANTHONY BOZZELLA: You know, I think first of all, it starts at the top. Coach Flanery is a competitive guy. He's a thinker. He's an innovator. He thinks out of the box. He does a great job team. Look at Marissa Janning, she doesn't sit on the bench, sulk, be upset that she can't play. When we beat them at our place she's picking up the balls before the game, she's talking to the ref, she's doing this, she's doing that. It starts with your leader, and they have one of the best leaders in the country, whether she can play or not, and that stems down to then MC and then Sydney and then Jade and so on and so on and so on. But those kids would never be what they are without the leadership of Coach Flan and his staff, and certainly her. Marissa is just a special young lady. I've said it to her numerous times, her value to this team is still incredible, and she deserves so much credit for that, because it's not easy. They could have packed it in and she wouldn't have let them. I give her a lot of credit for that. Q. Obviously you come into these conference tournaments and you want to win the whole thing, but can a performance like this help you reset before the NCAA Tournament, maybe help you focus on things that were starting to maybe slip a little bit? ANTHONY BOZZELLA: You know, we talked about that, and that would be a great answer. Yeah, the loss will help us. We'll get back. Ultimately we wanted to win the Big East championship. I did, and they did I should say. We had won six in a row, so it wasn't like we won one and lost two. We won six in a row and we beat Creighton on Friday night in heck of a game in our gym. We didn't play well against Providence at all. Our fourth quarter was bad. I thought yesterday was a tremendous game, too. We played a very good team. Yeah, we're going to get back and we need to focus a little bit better probably and we need to coach a lot better, definitely, and we need to just reenergize ourselves. But I'm not going to say this was a good thing because it wasn't. It's hard to get to the Big East semifinals. It's hard to get to the championship game. We wanted to get there. We wanted to give DePaul a chance or St. John's a chance on their home floor. I just give them a lot of credit for outplaying us today. They did. At the end of the day we missed a couple of lay-ups. We missed two wide-open threes. If you make those shots, it's a lot different. Ultimately that's -- yesterday Tiffany Jones made them. Today we missed them. It is what it is. But we've got to do a better job. The loss today was not going to make me coach any harder. We've got to do a better job, but I give Creighton tremendous credit today. They beat us. Q. MC McGrory, you saw what she was like back in Omaha and still trying to find maybe her voice on this team without Marissa. Thinking back to then versus what you saw a couple weeks ago versus what you saw out of her today, have you seen a difference out of that player? ANTHONY BOZZELLA: I voted her as one of the top players in the league, because she is. In our game in Omaha, she got in foul trouble. That helped a lot. Today she got in foul trouble and we could never exploit that. She's a great leader. She plays hard. She makes tough shots. When you get in the playoffs especially, everyone knows that you've got to have someone to make shots, a shot maker, and she's turned into that for Creighton. She's turned into their kid, five seconds left on the shot clock, she made it. They might not even be here if she didn't make that three against Villanova yesterday. The end. That was a tough shot. If she missed and Villanova comes out and hits a three and the game is completely different. So yeah, she's just a tough, hard-nosed kid, a kid that I love to watch play, and a kid that represents the Big East in the way I think Big East women's basketball needs to be represented with a bunch of kids that work really hard, that are obviously great student-athletes, but work really hard and get the most out of their ability because that's what our conference has got to be built on because we're not going the No. 3 ranked kid in the country, but we're going to get a kid that's really going to improve each other and really play hard all the time, and that's her. Q. How about the performance from Shakena Richardson when some of your other scorers were struggling? She had 40 points in the two games. ANTHONY BOZZELLA: I said to Shakena, I was excited and I said to you, I thought she'd have a big Big East Tournament because of the fact that she is locked in and very focused and starting to get healthy. She had been hurt for a long time. And I knew she'd have a good Big East Tournament, and I'm proud of her, and she's going to have a good NCAA Tournament, as well. I just want to add, I've been in a lot of tournaments, and this is my 24th year, 16th year of Division I, and the job that the DePaul staff did this week from the people who greeted us at the door to the security personnel to the people at the table was extraordinary. A great reflection on their athletic director Jeannie Ponsetto, and I cannot thank those people more because it's not an easy job to do what they do. Half of the time they are with someone who is really mad, and they did a great job, and they were courteous and respectful and did anything we asked them to do, from the locker rooms being spotless to us needing a glass of water. They were tremendous people, and as a host, I think whoever hosts next should really look at the template that their boss set forth for everyone because they did a wonderful job, and I wanted to thank them for that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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