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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: AUSTINMarch 18, 2016Karen AstonBrooke McCartyCelina RodrigoAustin, Texas COACH ASTON: Welcome to Austin, everyone. Seems like it's been a long time since Selection Monday and it's been a long week, and I think our players are ready to play. Felt we've had a really good week of practice. Our players came back from a couple of days off last weekend and seemed to be rejuvenated. I'm quite proud of the opportunity to host in Austin this weekend. We're looking forward to it. Should be a terrific challenge tomorrow night at 8:00. Q. Coach made mention, it seems like forever since Selection Monday and before that, you had not played in such a long time. How do your bodies feel? How does the team feel having a huge gap between games? BROOKE McCARTY: It felt good. Like Coach said, we got a weekend where we got to go home and visit our families. I think that really rejuvenated us. We all came back and we're just kind of ready to play. It's been a long time but our bodies feel great and we're just ready to go out and play tomorrow. Q. Celina, you've had time to check the Alabama State tape, what are the challenges that team presents and do they resemble any team you have played this year? CELINA RODRIGO: Yes, they are a great defensive team so we definitely have to make sure that we limit our turnovers. They play pretty aggressive and they play hard. I mean, they are always going to play hard and go after the ball, similar to West Virginia, just very aggressive on defense. We'll need to make sure we take care of the ball tomorrow night. BROOKE McCARTY: Yeah, I would say they are similar to West Virginia, too. They play very aggressive and their defense is really good, and they also know how to win. We just have to go out there and play our game, because they know how to win. They know how to defend and we have to limit our turnovers. Q. Now that it's actually here, how exciting is it? All year long, Coach has been talking about wanting to host, you guys are finally getting to host and you're tipping off tomorrow, what's the excitement level on the team? BROOKE McCARTY: It's really exciting. We're just ready to play tomorrow and go out there and compete on our home court again. That's really exciting. CELINA RODRIGO: Yeah, like she said, it was one of our main goals from the beginning and so just having this opportunity is something that we were really looking forward to. We're excited to play in front of some familiar faces and go out there and compete. Q. You talk about playing at home. Just what does playing here do for you? CELINA RODRIGO: I think we're comfortable. Everybody's comfortable playing on our home court. We're used to the court and we'll probably have some familiar faces out there with the fans. I think just having that and doing our usual routine, just being in our locker room and things like that -- we know the gym and everything. So we're just really looking forward to it tomorrow. Q. Celina, has it started to hit you yet? You know what I'm talking about. You're a senior. CELINA RODRIGO: Yes, it has. But it's exciting. I'm really looking forward to just playing every game as hard as I can with my teammates. It's been a great four years and I'm just ready to keep that going. Q. What has the talk been like with you and your fellow seniors, keeping this going as long as possible? CELINA RODRIGO: We're just focusing on one game at a time. Our plan is just to give it everything we have each game and stay in the moment and just enjoy everything we've accomplished and hopefully continue to accomplish. Q. Brook, you guys played one of the toughest conferences in the century, if not the best. How has the Big 12 prepared you for what Lisa head? BROOKE McCARTY: I think the Big 12 has prepared us because every game you go out there, you know it's going to be a battle. I think just like playing against the people in our conference, you go out there every night and it's a challenge no matter who you're playing. So going into playing these games at their season -- it's going to prepare us. I mean, we've seen everything, and so whatever people throw at us, we've seen it previously and we're just ready to play. Q. Celina, what's the difference this year entering the Tournament, as opposed to maybe last year? Seems like maybe more expectation this time around. CELINA RODRIGO: I think every year we just gain a little bit more experience, especially the upperclassmen, being that we've gone a little bit farther every year we've been in the Tournament, and so I think that taking that experience and having the young players learn from it, it's something that's very valuable to this team. Q. How hard is it to focus on just one game at a time? I know Coach is making sure you all say that, but how hard is that as a player? CELINA RODRIGO: I mean, it is difficult at times, but just we've learned that as a team, the importance of just staying in the moment, because we don't want to look ahead of anything else, because, you know, anything can happen. So we just want to make sure that we're focused on the next game. Q. For either of you, the Alabama State the other day -- they think they matchup with you at the guard position because they are bigger than you. Did you see that on film and is that a problem when you've faced guards? BROOKE McCARTY: I think that like you said before, the Big 12 has really prepared us. They have big guards. I feel like we've been competing against bigger guards all season. It's going to be a good matchup. Q. The familiarity of being here with the players, is there a potential danger zone with that, too? How do you fight against familiarity? COACH ASTON: Well, you try to, first of all, make the practices as competitive as you can leading into the Tournament. Obviously you want to have fresh legs and everything that goes along with having to play so quickly, if you were to get a win, and I'm saying anybody; they have to turn around and play pretty quickly. So you want to make sure that you have as much energy as you possibly can going into the first game. But on the flipside of that, I took the opportunity this week to get back to basics a little bit with this team, and try to remind them of kind of why they are where they are, and most of that was competitiveness and hard work and some detail. So we got back to that and we focused a lot on that before we turned our attention to Alabama State. So I do think that our practice has been productive and I think as a coach, you can kind of tell when a team is either wanting it to be over, or complacent. All of those things kind of go into a thing that's not a positive category in the NCAA Tournament, and I don't see that in this team at all. I think they are really excited to be home. They worked all year long to be able to do this, so I think the last thing they want to do, and again, it happens; it happens to the best of them, which is to lose unexpectedly. It happens all the time. We saw it yesterday and one today already. There's only been four games played and there's been an upset already in the women's game, so it does happen. But I don't think we've worked all year long to look over anyone. Q. You mentioned the layoff between Selection Sunday, you had a week before that when you last played. How does that affect your team going into this tournament, bang, bang, bang, bang? COACH ASTON: Actually, playing an Saturday, which we were a little surprised at. I think we may have anticipated, who knows why, we thought we might play on Friday. So when we got the word that we were going to play Saturday night at 8:00, it actually enabled us to take a mid-day off and concentrate on film and some detail, but not necessarily having to do anything physical. So I was kind of pleased with that, because we had gone pretty hard for a couple of days. So to be able to take that breath on Wednesday and then get right back at it Thursday and today has been a positive for us I think. Practices have been really good. I like this team and the way they practice. It's kind of the reflection of whether you think you have a team that has potential, and I go all the way back to in November when I really did know this team was going to be special. It's the way they practice. Some teams, you have to beg to go hard. Some teams, they just don't have it as far as liking practice and being competitive. And this team, actually enjoys practicing. I'm sure there's some days they don't but most off, once they get out there and get warmed up, they are ready to go. Q. Teams you've seen have success in the Tournament since you've been around, is there a common thread that allows them teams to get on a run this time of the year? COACH ASTON: I think part of it is the experience of going through maybe certain processes, and I've talked about that a lot with our program, which is that we needed to take steps to get back in the hunt again. One of them obviously was to get in the Tournament; one of them was to win a game in the Tournament. So we've kind of taken these consecutive steps every year, but I do see kind of a common denominator between teams that get to the Tournament consecutive years in a row. They seem to kind of understand what it's all about, and I give you an example which was the upset today with Albany winning. They just -- I think they had a great experience last year that almost upset Duke, and then you see them actually have an upset today. I think a lot of that is because they have been there and done it. I mean, they were good. They were okay. And that's why Alabama State has an opportunity to be successful and why we'd better bring our A Game, because they are used to winning, as Brooke said. I like it that my little point guards are paying attention to what's going on. Because Alabama State knows what they are doing, and they know how to win and they have been there and done this, and they are not intimidated by the environment at all. Q. You talked about your team being focused and not overlooking them, but how confident do you want your team going into this? You want them going in with some kind of confidence. COACH ASTON: Absolutely. We are in Austin, Texas. We did all this work to play in front of our fans and our fans help us be confident. I mean, that's the thing, I hope everything comes out tomorrow night, because I do feel like our fans were part of this, part of us having the opportunity to play here with having home-court advantage. We lost one game this year in the Erwin Center. So our fans were a huge part of that, and we want everybody to come out and help us have that home-court advantage. That's why you do this because you do feel, you feed off of your crowd, a lot of players do, for us to be able to have fans in the stands that we know and love. Q. Alabama State, what are the challenges you face against them, and like I asked the players, do they remind you of any team that you've played this year? COACH ASTON: I would say yes and no as far as reminding me. The players compared them to West Virginia, and I mean, that's their eye test, so maybe that is somewhat of a comparison. I would say they are comparing them to West Virginia because they play hard-nosed defense. They play really hard to get up the line in the passing lane and try to disrupt you, so I think that might be why the players think that's familiar. They are going to present some problems with us because they do matchup with our guards, and the 4-position has been a position that sometimes we either matchup with or we kind of don't, and we sort of have to play the forward position by committee this year, I think everybody can see that we've done that. And I think Britney Wright presents a challenge for us. So that will be something that, again, we'll just have to make sure that we keep constant defenders on her to keep her off the boards and to keep her from having a hot night. Q. Who are you going to start at the 4? COACH ASTON: We'll start our normal lineup. We'll start Ariel at the 4. But it's a committee. We all, I think we all -- I think everybody can see that we're playing the forward spot by committee. Q. The players seem pretty grounded as far as thinking ahead. Do you as a coach have to do any reminding that the big carrot may be two or three weeks from now, but you can't get there unless you take care of today. Did you have to remind them in any way? COACH ASTON: You definitely have those conversations about not getting ahead of yourself, because they can get caught up in listening to what everybody else is talking about instead of reality, and reality is tomorrow night at 8:00. But I've been pleased all year long with this team's ability to not look forward, and we've had experiences in Big 12 play where, I mean, I'll use the TCU game as an example where we needed to take care of that to have the opportunity that we had in the following game, and then you look at the Big 12 tournament, and it's one game at a time. So I think they have really learned how to stay in the moment. I've been really pleased and impressed with this group. I think it's because they just like playing. They like playing the game. They enjoy playing basketball. So I don't think they want it to be over by any means. I'm trying to get them out of the gym right now, let them rest their legs. Q. Are you having any one-on-one conversations with any of your seniors? COACH ASTON: Yeah, we've had some as a staff. Each individual coach kind of, you know, they go to certain individuals. Some of them, they are position coaches. But we've talked a lot just down the stretch of not only now, but also in Big 12 play, just what the seniors have meant to our program; that it's one-and-done. So I think they understand. They want this thing to go on longer and I think they will play like they want to keep playing. Sometimes it's difficult for seniors because they want it so bad, they have a hard time sometimes executing things down the stretch of their careers, because they want to be successful and they don't want it to be over and all that. So it's kind of a fine line between kind of not talking about it and just letting them play. Q. Tina Thompson, her first year as a coach here, everybody knows she's the leading scorer in the history of the WNBA, how has she fit in and what's been her impact? COACH ASTON: She fit in perfectly. Tina's personality allows her probably, I would guess, to fit in anywhere perfectly, because she's confident, compassionate, knowledgeable. So I think anything that you put her in front of, she's very capable of handling. I haven't asked her because that's something that' sort of saved for the end-of-the-year conversations, but I would think that it's been a huge learning experience for her, if you were to ask her just because she played pro basketball for 17 years and now she's coaching 18- to 20-year-olds. So I would end, in the recruiting side of it, all of that is just so different from what her world has been like. But I think she's going to be a terrific coach in the future and she's been a really positive impact on our program. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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