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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: AUSTIN

March 19, 2016

Austin, Texas

Missouri 73 - BYU 64

COACH JUDKINS: First of all, I just want my team to know, I appreciate what they have done this year. We have an awesome team, a team that a coach dreams of, girls that work hard every day, don't complain and do what the coach wants them to do and I really appreciate them. Sometimes you don't have that as a team. You have a lot of headaches and a lot of problems, and this team wasn't that way.

I also want to congratulate Missouri. They are a very, very good team. They are one of the best teams we've played. They execute very well, and right at the end, we just didn't make enough plays. That's what it comes down to in these games in the NCAA. It's who makes the most plays at the right time, and tonight they hit some baskets, made some plays, where we didn't.

But I'm very proud of this team, going 26-7, and doing well in this tournament. They are not happy, I know. But we're going to work hard and this will be a great opportunity for us to motivate ourselves next year. We have a lot of kids coming back, especially these two, and we're ready to go.

Q. Kalani, you were down double-digits going into the fourth quarter, and you cut it all the way down to two after that. Were there either break downs on offense, or what was it that you couldn't get over that hump?
KALANI PURCELL: Like Coach said, I think we just -- not running our stuff. We definitely ran enough stuff. We weren't able to get the shots that we had hoped, and they were able to get the shots that they had played. I think it's just tough I guess.

Q. Kalani, I know you weren't always matched up against her but you were in the paint with Frericks, she had a pretty big game. What stood out to you about the way she attacked around the rim?
KALANI PURCELL: I think she was just very physical, like the entire game. She understood her matchups and she was able to take advantage of them. She was able to was able to score 19 from it. She's a very smart, aggressive player, and I think that was really tough for us.

Q. What did they do in the second half --
MAKENZI PULSIPHER: They collapsed in on us. I think there is a few times we took it two deep, and we had open people to pass to, but it's hard when you have their team collapsing in on the driver and you can't get a good pass out. I think they played into that well, and stuff to work on.

Q. Kalani, I think they had six straight possessions where they made layups, basically. Is that a breakdown on your defense or something they were doing?
KALANI PURCELL: Like I said earlier, they were just able to understand their match-ups and they took advantage of them and they were able to post up press up their big guards against us, and then it was like a little bit breakdown on us, as well, not getting on the help side fast enough. Things to work on over the summer. We'll come back.

Q. A lot of whistles in this game. You got in early foul trouble. Did that maybe affect you guys?
MAKENZI PULSIPHER: Yeah, it puts them to the line, the time that you cut it down to two points, easy foul. They are a good free throw shooting team and last thing you want to do is put a team on the line early in the game like that. That definitely hurt us, every time we made a leap, they are getting two easy baskets based whether we weren't in position or whether it be a bad decision or a bad call, doesn't matter, the call was made they are going to the line. That's one more opportunity for us to stop and one more opportunity for them to score.

Q. Kalani just mentioned something about their big guards, and you guys are a four-out-of-seven teams from 3s and you're one of the best three-point shooters, teams, in the country. Did their size at the guard position hurt you guys as far as making threes, or what was the downfall there?
MAKENZI PULSIPHER: I don't think their size was not different than what we've played. We played girl their size. They switched everything, so really it comes down to inside presence. They were able to switch everything because they didn't respect our insides. So it was a one-dimensional game because they were just out there and able to guard it one-on-one on the post. I think we needed to do a better job of cutting and getting post feeds in and scoring to not have an out game.

Q. Did you not think they would switch screens? Missouri always switches screens. Were you guys thinking they would do that?
MAKENZI PULSIPHER: Yeah, we prepared for that. We knew they were going to do that, but it's the game. You can only prepare so much. You've just got to play.

Q. What do you think happened in the second half with Lexi? Seemed like scoring went well in the first half.
COACH JUDKINS: I think the adjustments on what they did, they switched, like Makenzi said, way more aggressively and tried not to let us get the ball where we wanted to. That's an advantage, when you have guards that they are all the same size, you can switch a lot of that stuff, and their bigs are pretty active.

Tonight, Porter didn't play a lot. I was hoping she would play a lot because she's not as active as their other bigs. She also went small. She came in with a small lineup and tried to even do more pressure.

What I would hope, and I kind of challenged my team, next year I need to get any bigs better. I could have put Kalani on No. 3, Cunningham, and she wouldn't have posted Kalani up at all like she did Lexi tonight. She just wouldn't be physical. That's where next year I'm going to really get my team better that way where I can do those kind of lineups.

We kind of found that out. When you play in one of the big five conferences, they are way more physical with their guards. That kind of happened when we played Georgia. Georgia did the same thing to us. Texas A&M did it to us, and we've got to learn from that. I know I will.

Next year my team will be a little bigger. Cassie, the point guard, Cassie Broadhead, Cassie played pretty good tonight, I think that was part of it. She matched up good with her size and she's strong enough to be able to be able to do that. I'm hoping next year to play Kalani in some three and be able to do that.

And I think Makenzi is right, we need to get inside presence so the team can't just cover the one-on-one and not have to worry about any help.

Q. Defense has been one of your strengths this year, you gave up a lot of layups, I know you talked about match-ups, but what was the problem in there?
COACH JUDKINS: Cunningham killed us in the post. She killed us on end-outs. Lexi didn't get in the right position. If there's any fault in Lexi as a player, she gets in those defenses, kind of where she doesn't think the game as well as she needs to.

I think what happened, Makenzi got hit on the head, too. We made a run, cut it down to two and made a foul. So making them hit a shot, score, and we foul. And don't do that to good teams. You can't. If they did that to us, we'd score, too. We'd score foul shots. You have to play solid defense and make people hit a shot and beat you, and I think we were trying a little bit too hard to be aggressive and I think that really hurt us.

One thing they do very well is they spread the court very well, and so it's hard to get a lot of help in the post. They do have a good post presence, really a lot better than ours. And so by that, it will be -- that's what we have to get next year I think.

Q. Kalani played most of the game in foul trouble, I don't know if she ever did foul out. Kind of rolling the dice leaving her out there --
COACH JUDKINS: I had to have her. We were down seven, she had a fourth foul. I just said, hey, we have no chance to win this game without her in there. And she's done it the whole year. People don't realize, she's plays that overseas foreign ball, and she's not used to some of this stuff right now. She gets a lot of cheap fouls early, and hopefully that's something we can really work on next year, because she's had to play with a lot of fouls in a lot of games. And I think next year she can do better with that and where she can be more aggressive and not get cheap fouls.

She's done a great job, and I had to leave here in there, and she would have liked to have been a little more aggressive. Probably if she wouldn't have had the fouls, I would have put her on Cunningham. I would have said, you guard her in the post. And with her fouls, I really couldn't do that.

Q. Can you maybe talk about Lexi's career and what she's meant for the program.
COACH JUDKINS: Well, it's just too bad we don't play pro rules, because if we did, she'd score 40. You kind of saw it tonight the first half, they couldn't guard her one-on-one. When she got the ball, they just all ran in there, and said go ahead, drive us all. You know, we probably wouldn't have had to do that so much this year. She was our inside threat driving it and getting it to the basket.

But she just -- Lexi is a competitor. She's tough. She really probably sometimes tries a little bit too hard. That's where she gets herself in trouble sometimes. She's been a really fun player to couch. You never have to motivate her. She's a gamer. She wants to play well. Basketball game is important to her.

In women's ball, it's a little different. You know what, a lot of them, they think this is the highest they are ever going to get but Lexi was a pusher, a great leader. She really did a good job with our team this year. That's something she had to change, she had to be more out with the team than just thinking of herself, and I thought she did a good job with that.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: AUSTIN

March 19, 2016

Jeff Judkins

Makenzi Pulsipher

Kalani Purcell