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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: COLLEGE STATION

March 18, 2016

College Station, Texas

THE MODERATOR: Texas A&M now joins us on the panel. At the far end of the table, we have senior Courtney Walker, senior Jordan Jones, senior Chelsea Jennings and immediately to my right and your left head coach Gary Blair. We will start today with questions for student-athletes.

Q. Jordan, with how the season ended a year ago, take us through this year and how special it is for not only for you to play the entire season but to have the NCAA Tournament start here at Reed Arena?
JORDAN JONES: The way the season ended last year, first off, for myself it wasn't what I expected or what anybody expected. But looking past that, as we ventured off into the SEC tournament and the NCAA Tournament, I felt like as a team we didn't live up to our potential despite what obstacles were thrown our way. But this year I feel like we're all motivated now more so than we were last year because it is our last go-around. And the main focal points for this team has been senior leadership all year. So I feel like the seniors have done a pretty good job coming in each day for practice, just getting our younger kids ready and trying to get them to develop and just get them used to what we're going to face in the NCAA Tournament. But as a team, I feel like that we're ready. We've had almost a week and a half off and we're all just anxious to get on the court and just get the ball tossed and just get the NCAA Tournament started.

Q. Courtney, when you look at Missouri State, defensively what kind of defense are you looking to go up against, what do they do well?
COURTNEY WALKER: Well, their defense isn't their strongest point, as we've noticed on film. So we're really going to look to attack them. We worked on man and zone this week. They're mostly a man team, but with the kind of players we have we're also anticipating zone as well just because of the strength of the players on our team.

Q. Jordan, you guys ended the regular season, I guess, in the SEC Tournament on a two-game skid with those losses to Kentucky and Tennessee. Has this time off, almost the two weeks now, has that served as kind of a reset button almost in a way for you guys to kind of refocus and get back on track before the tournament starts?
JORDAN JONES: Yes, almost, in some type of way you could call it a reset button. Like I said previously, we've come in once we lost to Tennessee and we lost to Kentucky, I felt like after the Tennessee game, once we lost, we really focused on what they exposed us to. And in that game with Tennessee even though we didn't get the results we wanted, I felt like we corrected that problem. Tennessee just played a better game than us that day. But after losing to Kentucky and Tennessee going 0-2 in our final SEC final stretch, I feel like going into the days we had off, the coaches really did a great job of getting us ready for the things that we weren't doing right in the first two seasons, in the regular season and SEC season. So coming in to practice every day, it's always been a type of thing that the coaches have a emphasis on in that day. And I feel as a team we really locked in and focused in on the things that the coaches wanted us to. And I feel it would carry over into our first game tomorrow against Missouri State.

Q. Chelsea, what about at the end of the rainbow here, you get a chance possibly to go to Dallas? You and Jordan a little bit going home, but for the whole team, what about the care and how much of a motivation is that knowing if you win you get to make a short trip to Dallas?
CHELSEA JENNINGS: I feel like it's a great opportunity for us, even Courtney Walker, just being in Oklahoma, that's pretty close and her family would be able to travel, too. You can see on the videos we were really excited about hearing that we were in the Dallas region (indiscernible).

Q. Courtney, as the 4 seed, how do you guys make sure that the lower seeded team doesn't have any sort of, I guess, will to win or how do you make sure that they don't want to pull the upset off? And I guess is it starting fast, making sure they don't have any confidence, what is your approach to make sure you guys don't get upset?
COURTNEY WALKER: You know, I think we just had a good talk about that, watching the Little Rock boys' game and the Baylor boys' game as well. There's some good women's games on today, too. We've seen Florida go down to Albany. So I think starting on Saturday is better than starting on the first day. You see teams get upset and far younger ones is it's good for them to see up close and personal that it really happens. And so just using that as an example and coming out and playing our game is going to be big. I mean, not letting them get any momentum, taking away their 3-point shots and taking away what they do playing fundamentals and the way Aggies play.

MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.

Q. Coach, what are your thoughts on Missouri State, what you have seen of them on film? What kind of challenges are they going pose to your team?
COACH BLAIR: Well, as usual, I can't give you a short answer. I don't know how to do that. But I'll tell you what my background is with Missouri State.

When I was at Arkansas for ten years, that was our closest big time rival. Not LSU, not Old Miss. It was Southwest Missouri. Southwest Missouri, at the time, they had been to two Final Fours.

Sitting on their bench will be Jackie Stiles. Most of you all young ones haven't even heard her. Two-time Kodak All-American. I recruited her hard at Arkansas. I've never seen a kid have a better individual workout than this kid. She went on to the NBA, got hurt, cut short her career, into coaching now.

I played some great games against them. When you go over to Southwest Missouri, it was one of the toughest environments I've ever played in ever. Probably that and Baylor might have been the two toughest arenas I played in on a home court where the crowd really gets on you and everything.

So, I've had some good luck and some bad luck against them. And I still remember when Stiles was a freshman, I told me best defensive player, this kid could cross you over, take you off the dribble. My player rolled her eyes at me, and she said no, Coach. Stiles went for 32 that night and beat us at my place.

So I know a lot about them. Their head coach, 1998, Kellie Jolly was the starting point guard for Tennessee. And a very, very good one. The best Tennessee team that they've ever had anytime, anywhere in all the years. Had already won national championships in '96, '97. This was going to be '98.

We're playing in Kansas City. We were Cinderella. We got to the Final Four. I've got an All-American point guard, Christy Smith, trying to keep the game fast and ugly and stay with them. It was an 8-point ball game. 8-point ball game, they miss. We get the ball, we're flying down the court, and I'm holding up one finger for one shot. I wanted to at least be down single digits, if not, we could cut it to six or five.

Christy went up and shot an open three-pointer and missed. And I was hacked. So here comes Shamika Holdsclaw with the ball flying down the court. I tell Wendi Willits who was guarding Jolly to come over and double because I said, she's going to dunk on us right before halftime.

She passes the ball like Jordan did in that great pass made to Paxton, I believe, back in the day. Went like this, passed it, and all of a sudden, Jolly -- and I said, oh, you know what? And I start walking towards the tunnel. And I don't even watch. I just listen for the net popping. The net popped. There were up by three, and I'm hacked off at myself and Christy. They're up by 11.

And all of a sudden, I'm walking out the tunnel. And right before I get to the tunnel, I look around, I said, where's my team and the other team coming by me. I'm walking out the wrong damn tunnel. That was the press tunnel. All the teams and the officials walked out the other one.

And I go into the -- I go into the press area and then start -- I told them, they wouldn't let me by because I didn't have any credentials. You know, know NCAA, you got to have buttons and ribbons and everything. And finally, my two assistants had to run and convince the guy I was the dumb coach that told her to get off of Jolly and Jolly hit the three. They went on and beat us by 28 and won the national championship by 22 the next night.

Kellie Jolly is the perfect point guard. She's the perfect coach to come in to Missouri State now and put this program back on the map. She was at NC State for a few years and was building that program, and got let go there, got the job there, and she's a big-time coach that knows how to win championships, knows how to win big ball games, and she knows how to elevate her kids to that next level.

These are the ball games that everybody gets scared to play in. The 5-12s, the 4-13s, the 2-7s, or whatever, because the David-Goliath thing, it works sometimes. But whatever it is, the big schools from the big conferences try to walk in with a swag and the little guys walk in with the chip on the shoulder. And they play freer and more relaxed than the team with the big reputations, the McDonald's All-Americans.

So as a coach, I've got to get my team ready. I'm enjoying playing on Saturday because we're getting to watch the upsets in the men's game, in the WNIT with three Big Tens lost yesterday. We just saw Florida blow a ball game.

And all of a sudden, you can build off that now, but when the game starts, who's favored? The team at home. And hopefully our fans will take care of that and give us a home court advantage.

But we're ready to play. Tournament games are won at the guard position. Both in the men and the women. You better have good guards that make good decisions and then everything else is just icing on the cake. So that's my short-winded answer.

Q. Gary, coming off two losses, is this first game more about your team and what they should do as opposed to matching up with what Missouri State can and can't do?
COACH BLAIR: When you come off a two losses, which that's only happened one other time this year when we lost to South Carolina and Florida, you're ready to get right back in the gym. We hadn't played in 15 days. We played one game in 20 days. So, that concerns me.

But I balanced it out with a lot of time off for my kids. A lot of times to regroup, a lot of times for them to feel good about their selves again and a lot of things that we worked on practice to try to quit trying to run the perfect play instead of knowing how to play.

Too many times, we're walking the ball down the court trying to have the perfect execution, and at this at this time of the year, the defenses are generally ahead of the offenses because you have got 30 films on everybody. So what we're trying to do is build to our strengths, put out athleticism in but play smart basketball.

The two losses, yeah, they hurt. Look who the two losses were to. Two teams that were picked in the top ten to start the year. Kentucky was the hottest team at the time. Beating us on Senior Day, there's no excuse. They outplayed us, but we're supposed to win on Senior Day. We're at home.

Tennessee was playing for their NCAA life. They played very well. We played better, but not near as good. [Cell phone interruption]. It's my wife. Hold on. Want to talk to her? Hold on. She's driving down here now from Fayetteville. Spending the night in Dallas. All right, you're off now. I've got you off. Okay. Sorry about that.

What was your last question?

Q. (Off mic)?
COACH BLAIR: Right now, we know we're a good basketball team, but we're not a great basketball team. We play great at times but who is a great basketball team now? Connecticut. Notre Dame. South Carolina at times. Baylor at times. Nobody else is great. It's all in front of all of us to prove it.

What were you all thinking of us in 2011 at our first press conference before we were going to play McNeese State? What was y'all's thought of us going into it? Were you all just marking down, hey, we're going to win the national championship? No, none of you all were. None of us coaches were either, tell you the truth.

But an opportunity is there. It gives you a chance. March Madness, you can have all the football you want. They don't have a March Madness. March Madness is so good for everybody. Every division of basketball, it gives you that chance to do something special.

Just right now, think of the American workplace right now. There ain't a damn soul working in those offices. Okay? They're all watching their computer or their scores right now. And maybe that's good. Sometimes we need a break.

Q. Coach, if you guys to make it deeper in the tournament, how important are your seniors to doing that?
COACH BLAIR: We built the schedule around the seniors. That's why we're hosting. I also want to thank our administration while we're hosting because we know how to hold championships in any sport, anytime. You got three schools that are not hosting that should be hosting, but due to conflicts, that they thought they were going to lose money, or they have a state tournament at their place, that's not looking ahead. That's not being fair to your women's sports.

Our administration takes care of us. That's why we're hosting. That's why our numbers have been so good. I'm fired up to play tomorrow. I'm tired of sitting. I'm tired of watching other teams play. We're going to be ready to play. And we might through it in the stands a few times. That's going to happen with turnovers. We're going miss some shots. Hopefully we can make more than we miss.

But my seniors, that's the whole key. Just like this guy from UALR, this article. Read USA Today's article on the Little Rock. I just read it to my team. How this kid had never been in an NCAA tournament. Their coach got fired last year. They won 13 games. The new coach came in and brought ten new players, and how this senior took it upon himself to make sure the ones that were staying were on the same bus with the head coach and the new ones he was talking to every day on the phone.

And he was talking about handling pressure. That's what you want out of a player. If you miss a shot, live with it, but don't be afraid not to take the shot. You're a senior, you're a leader. You better be running out there, not trying to look cool in warmup but be efficient in your warmups and be ready on that opening tip.

Seniors there, they've been pretty special. And they're going to keep doing it and then they're going to have great careers after here with their degree from Texas A&M or if they go on into the pros. They've been special.

Q. Coach, what are the differences in preparing your team game for a game in the regular season when you're favored compared to now in March when you're favored in tournament. Is there any big differences for you?
COACH BLAIR: You're looking at conference, I can tell you what chewing gum you're chewing. I can tell you if you got a mark here. I can tell you where your birthmark is. I can tell you everything about you. I can tell you what the coach's tendencies are. I know everything about you. And it doesn't mean I can beat you.

But that's how much research is done when you're dealing with conference foes, when you've got all the technology and the film on everybody. That's why defense and rebounding has to win at this level, and kids making big-time plays and getting the ball in the hands of the right people at the right time.

But, when you're playing somebody for the first time, we see them on film, but until you experience that, you cannot see toughness on film. You can see them play hard, but how tough is that kid? Can she cross you over? Is she just -- is she averaging seven rebounds a game because they're bouncing to her, or does she go get them? Okay.

This Snow kid, for example. She's averaging 16 -- Walker's been to the free-throw line more than any kid in the SEC. This kid, Snow, who we're going to play has made more than Walker's attempted. So it tells you she's get to the line at 5'10", 5'11", averaging eight rebounds, doing what she can to help her team. She drives the ball, she gets to the foul line, she'll post you up, she does the whole thing.

But she's playing Drakes in Northern Illinois. She's not going against Alaina Coates or (indiscernible) or the people that we have to go against in our league. So sometimes stats are misleading. But she's got my attention because she's doing it on a consistent basis.

It's just like Albany beating Florida. Ronnie Williams is the best player on the court but it doesn't mean Florida is going to win. Courtney Walker might be the best player on the court. Doesn't mean we're going to win.

Snow kid, have any of you heard about the kid at UALR that scored 32 on us last year, their senior? Conway, Arkansas. Before we played them, there isn't a person in this room could have told us a thing about her. She lit us up.

So, that's my long-winded answer.

THE MODERATOR: Any more for Coach?

COACH BLAIR: Appreciate you all. Want a good meal tonight? Go to Napa Flats. Try the Costa Rican whitefish. Get the gelato afterwards.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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