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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: LOUISVILLEMarch 17, 2016Kenny BrooksJazmon GwathmeyAshley PerezAngela MickensLouisville, Kentucky THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from coach. KENNY BROOKS: We're very excited to be here. It never gets old. So far everyone here has been great, very hospitable, making this experience for us very enjoyable. And that means a lot to me, because these kids have worked so hard all of our season. We started the year faced with a lot of adversity, losing our previous Player of the Year and I was gloom and doom. I didn't know what to expect because I wanted so much for these kids to do well. And they're right beside me. They just said, Coach, we'll be okay. And throughout the whole year, we had to re-invent ourselves a couple times throughout the year, but they did a great job of doing everything and anything that we asked of them and as a result it was a fantastic year. Even losing Precious Hall, we never once asked any of these kids to fill in for Precious or be Precious Hall. We asked Jazmon to be a little bit more Jazmon. We asked Ashley to be a little bit more of Ashley. We asked Angela, but we call her Muff Mickens, we asked Muff to be a little bit more Muff. And as a result they just came through and probably rewarded me, my coaching staff, with one of the better years that we have ever had in women's basketball. So we're looking forward to the opportunity, we know we're going to be playing a great opponent, a well coached team, any time you play a team and their coach has his name on the floor you know they're going to be well coached. So we're looking forward to it. It's exciting basketball. They get up and down the floor just like we like to get up and down the floor. We're very, very excited about that. Seems like it's been forever since we played man-to-man with somebody who wants to run with us. So we're looking forward to it being a very, very exciting basketball game. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for the student-athletes, please. Q. For any of the players. Coach talked about the adversity but now you reeled off 20 straight wins. What has gone into building off that adversity and building that kind of streak. JAZMON GWATHMEY: It goes with trusting your teammates. We have been through so many practices, good and bad and then games where we have to go into over time and it comes to grinding it out. That was our motto this year after Precious Hall going down. Even Ashley when she had her minor injury, but it comes to trust the chemistry on the court. ASHLEY PEREZ: I think it's just that we all hold each other accountable and I think every day we kind of everyone is required to show up to practice and work hard and that's something that we built throughout the season. ANGELA MICKENS: It's hard work, but we also have fun. The chemistry and the bond we have is something great. So with the hard work comes a close bond. Q. Your styles are similar to DePaul and you, the way you want to get up and down like coach spoke of. Normally I'm guessing teams wants to slow you down. But now DePaul's going to probably want to play with you in that regard, figuratively. What are your thoughts on that? ASHLEY PEREZ: We're looking forward to it. DePaul's definitely different than other teams that we have played this season. So we're excited. JAZMON GWATHMEY: Definitely, we strive off of playing really good defense so we can get on offense our transition, we like to run. It starts with must have getting that ball and rolling and that's how we get so many chances on the offensive boards basically we always just want to keep the ball. ANGELA MICKENS: Welcome to the track meet. (Laughter.) Q. For the seniors, just overall what does it mean to you to be in the NCAA Tournament? Just go down the line again. Jazmon, Ashley? JAZMON GWATHMEY: It means a lot. This is our last go around. We're not going to get another chance like this ever now. We're seniors, we really want to go out with a bang. ASHLEY PEREZ: It's really exciting because growing up you always want to play against the best and the NCAA Tournament is kind of our opportunity to play with teams the best teams in the country. So it's just something, it's just a great experience. ANGELA MICKENS: I think it's rewarding for how hard we actually work. Seniors actually lead the team, so we have teammates freshmen a lot of freshmen, who will continue rolling for us. So it's great to set an example for them. Q. You said, "welcome to the track meet," but you are the top team in terms of three-point defense and also really strong rebounding team. What is it that your coaches preach to you, what's your kind of defensive mantra? ANGELA MICKENS: Getting back in transition is a big key for us. And as long as we defend and hit the three and make sure we continue to be us, I think we'll be fine. Q. You guys have one of the earliest games of the tournament on Friday which will lead into a really early pregame session. Is this the earliest you've ever had in that kind of session or does that change your preparation at all, I think, it's a 6:30 walk through this morning. KENNY BROOKS: We're not taking that 6:30 walk through. Trust me on that. But, no, our first round game this year was 12 o'clock. I think we had one more other game I think in a tournament setting that was 12 o'clock. So, actually our last game of the season was at 12 o'clock. So, it's not what you prefer, but they're used to it, they understand it, and we'll be okay with that. Q. How does that change your preparation? KENNY BROOKS: We have a lot of time, we'll go over some stuff here today. It's just so early. But what we can do that's different from the later game is we're able to get on the floor an hour before and the kids will be able to get out there and shoot a little bit more. THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll excuse the student-athletes and have questions for coach. Q. DePaul's RPI is 29, yours is 30. Both of you talked about how similar your programs are. What in your opinion will be the degree of separation tomorrow between the two teams? COACH BROOKS: I think that the team that imposes their Will and does what they do best and does it better than the other team will prevail. We're very similar, but we're contrasting in certain areas. They love to shoot the three. I don't know if we played against a team that attempts more threes than they do. And our defense, the fact that we led the country in three-point field goal percentage defense is not by accident. I'm a coach that my pet peeve is I don't like people shooting a lot of 3-pointers against us, so we do a really good job of running people off the line. But we haven't played against someone who really dedicates their offense to 3-pointers as much as DePaul does. So they're going to run their style. We're going to try to run them off of it and I think the team that prevails in that area will probably be victorious. But everything else I think we're very similar. They're probably -- we scouted some teams and this is probably my favorite part of the year to get to watch different types of teams. I don't know if I've seen a team that is a better passing team than this team. They just seem to know where they want to be and one through five they're great passers. So we're going to have our challenges. Q. We have spoke a lot about similarities. Both of you lost to Baylor by 14 points. Have you compared, contrasted film at all on that or is that so far ago that that's not on the table now? KENNY BROOKS: We have actually focused on them more recent, what they have done. We are aware of that situation. Ironically for us, that Baylor game for us was the game that we grew up. We were in the process of re-inventing ourselves and low and behold we had back to back games against Big-12 opponents. And in particular our center, Taylor Cooper-Williams, at that point when she played against Baylor, I figured we were going to be pretty good this year. Kim actually came up to me after the game and said, you guys are a heck of a team and I'll see you in the NCAA Tournament. So I hope she's right. I hope we get to see her later on. But that was a game that we grew up. But as far as cross comparisons, we really haven't done that, we really focused more on what they have done recently. Q. Walk through this 20 game win streak. What goes into building that? What moments stand out to you from that? And how do you not let the expectations and the pressure of that get to you at this point. KENNY BROOKS: It's ironic that we're in a 20 game winning streak, because we haven't looked at it that way at all. We have really -- when you're a Mid Major like we are and fighting for respectability, we went into this summer with the expectations that we could possibly be a top-25 team to start the season. With the challenges that we have, we felt like the credibility we had. And then when Precious Hall went down, that's devastating to us and it could be devastating to a lot of Mid Major programs, when a person of her caliber goes down. 21 points a game from a Mid Major, you take that away. But we never hung our heads. Muff and Jazmon, after they learned of her fate, they looked at me very calmly and they said, we'll be okay. From that moment I was, okay, we're going to be fine. But we had to find ways to invent ourselves and re-invent ourselves. So throughout this whole streak, we haven't concentrated on, okay, we have won five in a row or eight in a row, it was really focusing on the next game. You get caught up in focusing on the next game, low and behold, all of a sudden, it's a 15 game winning streak, then all of a sudden it's 18. And then you get to the tournament and when you're a Mid Major, that's all you're thinking about, is winning three more. You're not even caring about the 17 previous, because if we don't win, and we're a Top-30 program, we don't know if we're in. Because we don't have the opportunities that most people have to come up with an upset, come up with a top-50 win. So we just really focused on the next day. That's what made this group very special, is that they didn't look to what they had accomplished. It was like, okay, what do we need to do to get better every day. And again, it grew. It became two, it became five, it became eight, 10, 15 and all of a sudden it's 20 through the NCAA championship and now you're going on forward. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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