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MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 8, 2016Kathy OlivierDylan GonzalezNikki WheatleyLas Vegas, Nevada UNLV - 71 Boise State - 65 THE MODERATOR: Coach, if we could start with you and get your thoughts on tonight's game. HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: I'm still just grinning about this whole thing. I thought it was a great basketball game. It was probably really fun to watch I would think as a fan. But love the effort by the Lady Rebels. We're a hard-working basketball team, and it's paying off right now. And we worked so incredibly hard and it shows on the court and it shows with the defensive effort that we gave. We said to the team they're going to have one run, and they did make a great run in the fourth quarter. But our team handled that. We put our foot down and said, No more. And it was just an incredible basketball game with a lot of weapons right out on the basketball court with the Lady Rebels right now. Sorry, I can't even think right, I'm psyched, I just want to cheer for the team. Don't put that down. Q. This is your first trip to semifinals in quite some time. What does that accomplishment mean for this program? HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: Well, we feel, and we talked -- the coaching staff talked about it. These people deserved it. They worked extremely hard this year. I would have to say probably 95 percent of the times in practice they just were workers. They never have attitudes, maybe 5 percent of the time, but they are just workers and they like hard work. They compete. And for us to be in the semis, I mean I think a lot of it has to do with our seniors. Our seniors don't want the year to be over. And it's very obvious. Aley Rohde, she made her paint presence at the very beginning of the game. That was huge. And Amie hit that big three at the end of the game. And I think it says a lot when your seniors are fighting like our seniors are still doing. And we have an incredible sophomore and freshman class. Q. You had a tough year shooting the ball. How satisfying was that first quarter? DYLAN GONZALEZ: Honestly it just feels good to get the win under our belt. For me personally you just kind of have to forget about the last miss. And that's our team entirely. Even if we don't get a shot that we are satisfied with or if we miss a shot that we really wanted, we have to forget about it and move on to the next play. That kind of was my mentality going into this game, give my all, give it all my effort. Q. Did you feel like they were going to keep coming? HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: No. Actually, we have a lot of respect for our defense and we have a lot of confidence in our defense. And we just said -- it was cute in the huddle because Coach Collier was yelling it and all the players were yelling it, That's their run, put an end to it, put a stop to it. They are a great basketball team, they have a lot of weapons out there, too. They have a good inside game. We have a good inside game. They have good shooters, they have a good point guard. There are a lot of similarities on their basketball team and our team. But we wanted it more. Just down the stretch I felt like we wanted it more. Q. I think there were two points in the game, in the second half, you look for pivotal points, you're up by 11 after a time out and Brooke, I believe it was you, made a baseline pass across the court to Dylan, that's when you hit the three. You still had a big lead, but it sort of cushioned before Boise made that run. How pivotal was that? And Coach, you mentioned Amie's rebound at one end, she comes back down, her first points of the game are a three that sort of stymied their run. If you could touch on those two, I don't know if you remember that play. DYLAN GONZALEZ: I think I actually passed it to Brooke on the baseline for that three-pointer, and honestly, just gives us so much momentum to see the ball go through the hoop and then you kind of see our team, everybody gets so excited and the feeling is electric. It helped us to build that momentum to just keep pushing, no matter how tired we got we knew it wasn't over and we were just going to keep pushing. BROOKE JOHNSON: Yeah, personally, I don't feel that was the pivotal moment. Amie's was a huge end to that run. And I feel it was just us being relentless on the boards and staying poised the entire game, that was our word. And I think that just helped us go on our runs and stay consistent throughout the game. Q. As I mentioned, after the game you were all over the place, but you seemed to be all over the floor, as well. Your will to win is just always, it just shrieks so loudly with your actions. Talk about that, being the littlest player on the court, but yet shining as the biggest star at different times in the game. NIKKI WHEATLEY: I just feel like last game I could have done more as far as just moving around more, doing stuff. My shots aren't hitting, I can still do stuff, get rebounds. I felt like this game was -- I was trying to make a point of trying to do a little bit of everything. I know their point guard is really good, trying to play good defense on her, trying to get everybody involved and different things like that. I feel like we have so many great scorers on this team, if someone is not hitting you can do so much more outside of scoring to help, and I was trying to do that. Q. Can you touch on Fresno State? HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: Can you catch me tomorrow morning? No. We've had two really close games with them. We battled at their place, I want to say that was our opener, our conference opener, and the game could have gone either way. They're a good basketball team. They know how to go like slow-quick and they can turn it on like that. And they've won this tournament before. They have a lot of experience. They have really good senior leadership. They're another team that has good inside presence. They can shoot it from the outside and they have actually a couple quick point guards. They're a good basketball team. We're going to have to battle. We're going to enjoy it for another hour and 15 minutes, and then get back on track and be ready to battle from a semifinal game against Fresno. Q. At one point when Aley committed her third foul, Paris came in and she was in for an extended amount of time. She was really able to help with the inside-outside game that you play. Talk about her minutes tonight. HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: You know, we've been talking about this for the last, what, probably about ten games, where Jordyn and Paris, they don't act like freshmen, they're attentive. They are extremely coachable. They really are good teammates. Usually freshmen are a little bit scatter-brained, not all freshmen, but Paris was driven. She got great inside position. We actually went to her, like we called a play for a freshman on a big stage and she answered. And Paris is someone who, like we said, she's just so driven and focused and very fundamentally sound. Yesterday she hit a huge three. So she's doing great things. Defensively she has great positioning. Defensively she can grab some boards. We thought she played great. The other one, Jordyn came in, I know she didn't score, but Jordyn Bell came in and makes things happen immediately on the defensive end. She has great feet, she has great energy, we can't say enough about our freshmen. Q. I know it's kind of ironic you're playing Fresno State, the hometown school for you. What is the emotion for you? Does it carry extra meaning for you, getting them in such a big game like this? BROOKE JOHNSON: I don't really look at me being from that area and that being somewhat of my hometown. I look at it as more of this is a team where we could have beat both times and they were fortunate enough to come out with the wins. And we've been wanting to play Fresno since those two games. It's going to be a great game, we're looking forward to playing both of them, and even being from my hometown it's very nice to do that. HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: She says she doesn't think of it as from her hometown, because they keep introducing her from Hartford. And she thinks, the team starts yelling, You're from UCONN, so that gives us that confidence from the beginning. Q. Just curious how having a game under your belt in the tournament helped you in this game, because it seemed like you guys played way more relaxed out of the gates? BROOKE JOHNSON: I think it's great. Personally it it helped us get out our first-game jitters of being on the course. Although we are from Vegas, this is not our home court, we do not play in the Thomas & Mack throughout the year. So getting that first game under our belt and getting the nerves out is something we're definitely happy about. NIKKI WHEATLEY: Kind of the same thing. I feel like getting that first game under our belt, seeing the intensity level for everybody, we were introducing the freshmen to it, telling them how intense it was last year, getting used to that new intensity level from conference to tournament. Getting used to that against Air Force, and Air Force played us a tough game, having to pull out the win, it helped us to for the following games, just pull out the wins and battle no matter what. DYLAN GONZALEZ: I definitely agree what both of them said. Jumping off what Nikki said, come tournament time it's the environment is crazy. The intensity picks up. Everybody just plays at a whole different level. So I feel like to kind of get to experience that before having to play Boise was really beneficial for us, because we didn't come out kind of like deer in headlights, like, Oh, my goodness. So it was honestly, I think for us, I think it was very beneficial. And so I'm glad that we came out with both of the wins on our end of things. And I'm excited to play another game. Q. This is the second night in a row that the team did a great job getting to the line. Can you talk about the team's aggressiveness and their will to keep fighting. HEAD COACH KATHY OLIVIER: That's true. We talk about a paint presence, and we're really focusing on attacking the basket. And the team has done a great job of listening to the game plan. Again, Aley Rohde kind of started it off. She wanted the ball inside, when she wants the ball inside it opens up the outside. When it opens up the outside then we can look to penetrate. And the team has done a great job being very aggressive both attacking the basket and on the rebounding end. We've been a beast on the boards and that's something we're very proud of. Not just the post players that are rebounding, it's the perimeter players, it's post players, it's a little bit of everybody. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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